2010/8/31 Levente Uzonyi <leves@elte.hu>:
On Mon, 30 Aug 2010, Miguel Enrique Cobá MartÃnez wrote:>
"You must be kidding. The freedom to fork is a essential right of open source software: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10379280-16.html
http://asay.blogspot.com/2006/10/wither-right-to-fork.html
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd http://www.opensource.org/node/357
period."
If you agree with OSI.
Right. People always get into this argument. OSI has a definition of "Open Source" that is based on a moral position of having certain "freedoms" with the code. Legally, however, there is no such definition. When you write code, you (or your employer) own the code and you (or your employer) can release it under more or less any licenseâand with any restrictionsâyou desire. If I wanted, I could release code with the restriction that you can only use it on Wednesday! The right to create "derivative works"âobviously a significant component of forkingâis restricted by copyright law unless the creator explicitly grants that right to you. So you're perfectly free to say that WebClient is not "Open Source" if you wish; but you don't obtain specific rights just because the source is open. Your rights are entirely determined by your license with the creator(s). That's all I'll contribute to this discussion for the moment. We're working with intellectual property lawyers to prepare our ESUG talk on open source licensing; hopefully we'll be able to touch on some of this then and have some useful resources for the community as an output. Julian