[PROPOSAL] Open Source certification

Havoc Pennington rhp at zirx.pair.com
Sat Apr 10 21:37:18 UTC 1999


On Sat, 10 Apr 1999, Will Lowe wrote:
> But here we get into feeping creaturism.  We _don't_ have a solid
> definition of Free Software in the OSD or DPSG if we also want to include
> the stipulation that the code be useful for anything in particular.
> 

This doesn't belong in the OSD, which is a definition of what it takes to
be free software. But as RMS is fond of pointing out, licenses which are
equal along the dimension of freeness can be more or less beneficial along
other dimensions. ("Beneficial" of course means "beneficial *for someone*"
and who the someone is (suits, hackers) affects ones evaluation of a
license.)

Havoc



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