Re: Boy Scout Open Source

["John Abreau-2" <user=184@nabble.blu.org>]

 I'm picturing a panel discussion with several speakers, such as 
Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, and Bruce Perens. 

Of course, there's also an alternative slate: Steve Ballmer, Jack 
Valenti, and Dick Cheney.  :-P 


Jerry Feldman wrote: 
> On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:09:50 -0400 
> MBR <[hidden email]> wrote: 
> 
>   
>> I completely agree with your proposed topics.  I'd also like to suggest 
>> that the very issue you note, i.e. that "there are also some 
>> misconceptions as to what OSS is" is itself a legitimate and important 
>> topic for a future meeting.  The fact that the general public (including 
>> most in the media) misunderstands what's meant by Open Source Software 
>> or what's meant by Free Software is a crucial weapon used against F/OSS 
>> by the promoters of proprietary software.  So those of us in the 
>> technical community need to brainstorm with non-techies in order to come 
>> up with a simple description of F/OSS that's: 
>> 
>>    1. 
>> 
>>       easily understood by non-techies, 
>> 
>>    2. 
>> 
>>       quickly conveys the benefits non-techies derive from F/OSS to 
>>       non-techies so they feel they have a reason to care abuot F/OSS, and 
>> 
>>    3. 
>> 
>>       embodies the core concepts of F/OSS as intended by those of us who 
>>       do understand its intent 
>> 
>> For such a simplified explanation, it would probably introduce way too 
>> much complexity to explain that there are now 10s (100s?  1,000s?  I've 
>> lost count.) of F/OSS licenses, and instead focus on what the problem 
>> was that Stallman was trying to solve when he first came up with 
>> copyleft in the late 1970s, and how F/OSS licenses solve the problem. 
>>     
> 
> 
> One issue that Stallman and the Open Source community deals with is the 
> English language. The word, "free" means BOT "free as in free air" but 
> also means "free" as in Freedom, and it is the second definition that 
> is meant by free as in OpenSource. One of the misconceptions is that 
> when you license a software product with the GPL, you are NOT 
> contributing it to the public domain. You continue to own the 
> copyright. 
> 
> In any case, I would like to see a topic at one of our meetings 
> targeted at non-techies to explain in "easily understood" terms, what 
> it means for the end-user, but also how some businesses are able to be 
> successful by developing and distributing OpenSource products. 
> Additionally, under the "easily understood" category, an explanation of 
> a couple of different OpenSource licenses, as the GPL is not the only 
> valid OpenSource license. 
> 
>   
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