Open Source Certification

I work with Zope, a free, open-source web application server. It's a very different development environment than my former dev life on the Microsoft platform. Zope is open source, not because the founders of the project were open source zealots, but because their VC forced them to do it -- otherwise the product would have drifted along like the dozens of other web application frameworks kicking around in the late 90's.

Open source is important to me, but free is not. I would be happy to pay a reasonable fee for the right to use Zope. I'm happy to pay Dave $40 a year to use Radio. I'd happily pay that for a Zope license. I'd also happily pay $5,000 for a commercial license. But I still want to see the source. I want to be able to track down a bug and maybe even fix it. I want to be able to read through the code and figure out what the heck is going on. I want to know that the product won't become an orphan if the company goes under.

So imagine my pleasure when I noticed the Open Source Certification logo on the Python website. Great! Open source divorced from the free software stridency.

Wrong. Let's begin with a reading from the book of Lamentations -- uh, I mean the Open Source Definition...

Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria:

1. Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

Rationale: By constraining the license to require free redistribution, we eliminate the temptation to throw away many long-term gains in order to make a few short-term sales dollars. If we didn't do this, there would be lots of pressure for cooperators to defect.

Pressure to defect where? To freedom? To prosperity? "Defect" is such an appropriate term in this case. People don't defect from places where they're happy and healthy. They defect from places like North Korea.

If you didn't do this, you'd have lots of innovative commercial companies who are happy to share source code, but who are unwilling to throw away the short-term ability to put food on the table and the long-term ability to control the development direction of their product.

But don't bother them with practical considerations; they've got a jihad to run!

...

On another note, I'm not using the correct method to display the logo. These great believers in freedom do want to be able to track hits on your site, so they...

HTML Usage
We insist and ask that you link to the images of your choice instead of saving it on your own server.

Please follow this example:

<a href="http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php"> <img src="http://www.opensource.org/trademarks/opensource/web/opensource-110x95.png" border="0" width="110" height="95"></a>

Please pay special attention to the heigth [sic] & weight [sic] variables. They are included in the image name.

They care about tracking your hits, but not about proofreading, nor about accessibility. No alt text for the image. Oh well, they're busy; they've got a jihad to run!  

U.S. Flag Code (4 US Code 1)

(i) The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard. Advertising signs should not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.