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Date:      Wed, 22 Jul 1998 16:53:04 +0200
From:      Eivind Eklund <eivind@yes.no>
To:        Gregory Sutter <gsutter@pobox.com>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: "Open Source Town Meeting" supports only one faction
Message-ID:  <19980722165304.57689@follo.net>
In-Reply-To: <19980721223151.B15764@notabene.zer0.org>; from Gregory Sutter on Tue, Jul 21, 1998 at 10:31:51PM -0700
References:  <Pine.GSO.3.95.980721182647.24542A-100000@shell> <Pine.BSF.3.96.980722005832.2295A-100000@lorax.ubergeeks.com> <19980722000542.56979@futuresouth.com> <19980721223151.B15764@notabene.zer0.org>

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On Tue, Jul 21, 1998 at 10:31:51PM -0700, Gregory Sutter wrote:
> I know this will just stir up trouble in the thread, but...
> if X11 was free software instead of just open source, TOG couldn't have
> changed the license to a semicommercial one.

This is wrong.  If it had been locked-down software (e.g, GPL) as
opposed to free software, they couldn't have added more licensing
terms.  With any fully free license (the type the FreeBSD project
encourage :-) this could be done.  Anybody could take most of the
FreeBSD sources and do the same thing - however, we'd be likely to
out-develop them, so it isn't of real interest.

> Of course, if free in this case was GPL, X11 couldn't have been
> packaged with any commerical Unix.  There are tradeoffs to each type
> of license... and I'm still not convinced which is best.

It depend on what kind of project you're doing, how distributed the
set of developers are, in which phase of development you are, and if
you think a commercial entity is likely to be able to out-develop your
free software team.  Just be certain you can manage to have the right
license at each and every step (including the ability to change some
parts of the license during development if necessary).

Eivind.

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