[ILUG] email sent to politicians about Mary Hannafin'sdecisionnotto use open source

[Martin List-Petersen]

On Mon, 2004-05-03 at 19:23, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Martin List-Petersen (martin at list-petersen.net):
> 
> > I do fully agree. People should realise, that this not is a war
> > against Microsoft, but it is about the freedom of having access to the
> > source, modifying it if you wish and having more to choose from than
> > one company (on every part of the operating system).
> 
> Access to source is important, and permission to modify it, but neither
> is the key attribute of open source.  

Define the key attribute of Open Source. That is actually a hard one,
because everybody sees a different meaning in what Open Source is.
Actually ... it is the freedom in itself, to just use Open Source the
way you want. There is only one requirement: once you've changed it and
want to redistribute it, you have to redistribute the source also. Or
... wait a second .. actually it depends on your license, but that is a
different issue :o)

> Ever heard of Microsoft
> Corporation's "Shared Source Initiative"?  It's a programme to give
> selected customers and business partners access to Microsoft source code
> under tight legal restrictions.  

Of course ... but it doesn't give you the right to modify and
redistribute.

> Linux: Good, fast, AND cheap.

Good, fast, stable and not necessarily cheap, but you decide yourself
what price you want to pay (in a certain extend.)

Kind regards,
Martin List-Petersen
--
"This isn't brain surgery; it's just television."
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