[ILUG] email sent to politicians about Mary Hannafin's decision not to use open source

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Kae Verens (kae at verens.com):

> I'm not sure if anyone has picked up on this yet, or even if I'm reading 
> it wrong myself, but it seems to me that Microsoft's "Shared Source 
> Initiative" allows people to /view/ the source, but says nothing about 
> changing any glaring errors in the source that are spotted by the viewee.

I personally haven't seen enough definite details about the supposed
"Shared Source Initiative" to properly comment.  In fact, details have
been so incredibly nebulous that I've sometimes tended to believe that
it exists only as a PR notion.  If somebody comes across a detailed
description and reasonably authoritative, please point me to it.

I _will_ point out that such a program that gave no permission for even
private modifications would be almost entirely pointless.  In theory,
a you-may-look-but-not-touch agreement to view source code would help
licensees do security-auditing and submit patches they'd like the
licensor to merge into later versions, but that's about it.

> i.e.: It seems to me that a major difference between OS and Closed 
> Source (CS?) is not just in being able to view the source, but also 
> being able to recompile with a modified source. Microsoft does not allow 
> that as far as I know.

The term you're searching for is "proprietary", _not_ "closed source".  
The latter term says nothing at all about the nature of the licensing
beyond whether or not you're permitted to peek at source code, which
(for reasons previously discussed) makes basically no real difference
over the long term.

"Proprietary", on the other hand, has (in the software context) a
defined, useful meaning -- that of being licensed in a way that didn't
confer on recipients the legal right to fork.