[Zope] FYI: Hadar's IDC report

[Michael Hirsch]

Paul Everitt writes:
 > 
 > Quick FYI.  Hadar Pedhazur, our board chairman, co-authored a bulletin
 > for IDC.  It is available as a link of our home page under News:
 > 
 >   http://www.digicool.com/
 > 
 > This is quite an important document, as it states the case to IDC's
 > customers for the open source model.  Enjoy your free web reading -- it
 > costs _significant_ dollars to get a print copy!!

It is a fine document, though it does contain some inaccuracies.  They
are correct in essence, however, but they are technically wrong.

First, he writes (in italics) in rference to the GPL:
    Users were required to donate any changes/improvements that they made
    to the code back to the original copyright owner

This is not true.  Users are required to license their code under the
GPL.  One way to do this is to donate your code to the original
author, but it is by no means necessary.  

Second, there are several places in which is is claimed or implied
that "Open Source" is a trademarked phrase.  It is true that a
trademark was once applied for, but the application was withdrawn.  I
beleive that the current legal term is "OSI Certified", but no one
uses that.

As I said, these are technicalities, but possibly important ones.  For
instance, even if you add a large module to someone's GPLed program,
you can still relicense the module to a third party under a different
license.  It is your code, not the author of the original program's.

A nice overview document, otherwise.  It is nice to see a for profit
company that seems to understand open source.

-- 
--Michael