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All OSS Developers Are Equal, But Some OSS Developers Are More Equal Than Others!
May 09, 2008 (3:00:00 PM) - 6 months, 4 weeks ago
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The Open Source Software community was founded on the notion that any party can use, modify and further distribute OSS, so long as that party contributes back to the OSS community the human-readable "source code" of any changes/ enhancements made to the software. Unfortunately, the Free Software Foundation's recent efforts to revise the GNU General Public License have eroded this core "share-and-share-alike" principle. More specifically, the FSF's failure to fix a legal glitch in the GPL called the "ASP Loophole," and its treatment of certain OSS developers more favorably than others in terms of which of their OSS enhancements they are asked to contribute back to the OSS community, have relegated certain OSS developers to second-class status and have (along with other FSF missteps) caused dissension and division within the OSS community.
Read more at: metrocorpcounsel.com
All lawyers are equal, but some are more disgusting than others
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 122.167.13.152] on May 10, 2008 05:49 AMDespite the industry-changing positive impact of FSF (with their many allies and supporters), there are surely many improvements that remain to be made, and evolution yet to be determined. A lawyer can and really should contribute specific airtight ways to deal with their core complaint of the "ASP loophole", that does not create bigger new problems. Now that would get positive attention, and be a big move towards a solution.
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