Open source dmd on Reddit!

[Gregor Richards]

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Jesse Phillips" <jessekphillips at gmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:gosuaj$2qdu$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> So it basically needs to be free in all senses of the word. I disagree
>> but many others seem to hold this view. I don't know why they don't just
>> call it "free software."
> 
> IIRC, Once upon a time, it was like that. "Open source" meant "source is 
> available at no cost". "Free-as-in-freedom software" meant "A superset of 
> 'open-source', plus other freedoms such as redistro." I think a lot of the 
> people that got into the Linux/OSS/Slashdot/etc scenes in the last few years 
> never actually learned the difference and thus go running around equating 
> "open source" with GPL/zlib/BSD/etc.
> 
> 

Uhhhhh, no. The Open Source Definition, created by the Open Source 
Initiative which effectively created the term in 1998 (there was no real 
use of the term before then), requires redistribution, etc, and the term 
Open Source is trademarked. It's in violation of their trademark to use 
the term to describe anything that doesn't follow the definition, which 
is roughly equivalent to what FSF describes as Free Software (modulo a 
few quirks)

The reason that people equate the term with those particular licenses is 
because those particular licenses are approved by the OSI, so you can't 
possibly run into any troubles using the term referring to them. But 
software for which the source is readable but not redistributable is NOT 
Open Source.

  - Gregor Richards