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A comment on Canonical, Ltd. On Record: Seeking Open Core. Parent comment

Re:Canonical, Ltd. On Record: Seeking Open Core by Mithrandir on Sunday October 17, 2010 @02:35PM (#1801030)
Open source (or should I say, the catchphrase open-source) lets you "see" the source code, but not use it. It's more loose than:

Free software (some call it "libre") lets you see and use the source code.

Proprietary does not let you do either.

Some software makers call their software "open-source" when it's really free, and some call their software "free" when it's really just "open".

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

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Re:Canonical, Ltd. On Record: Seeking Open Core by cmsj on Sunday October 17, 2010 @03:44PM (#1801215)
I wouldn't agree with "but not use it".

I tend to explain the difference as being that Open Source places the freedom of people first (e.g. with a BSD licence, developers have freedom to do anything with a piece of code) and Free Software places the freedom of software first.

(I don't project any moral judgement of either of these goals, I think they both have their place. Also hi! ;)

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Re:Canonical, Ltd. On Record: Seeking Open Core by FooBarWidget on Sunday October 17, 2010 @03:46PM (#1801218)
That's nonsense. Open source is defined by the Open Source Definition as published by the OSI. http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd Read section 3, Derived Works. Putting a source tarball online with a license that says "you can read this source but you can't do anything else with it" doesn't make it open source.
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Re:Canonical, Ltd. On Record: Seeking Open Core by Mithrandir on Sunday October 17, 2010 @03:57PM (#1801248)
I was talking about the catchphrase "open-source", not what the OSI talks about.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html

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Re:Canonical, Ltd. On Record: Seeking Open Core by gaius on Sunday October 17, 2010 @03:40PM (#1801202)
By that definition SAP is open source! Since you get all the ABAP code and can do whatever you want with it, if you buy SAP first...
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