[COFF] [TUHS] 386BSD released

[Theodore Y. Ts'o]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 04:08:34PM -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
> 
> Your thinking would be reasonable *iff* AT&T had won the case, but the fact
> is the ideas (IP) and even the source to the basic UNIX was open and
> available.

And yet, much is made by the *BSD's that the reason why Linux won and
*BSD's lost the battle of mindshare was because of the AT&T lawsuit.
The FUD caused by the copyright and the license *did* have an impact.
Which is why I believe the Open Source Definition matters, and why
it's important that we make a sharp distinction between "Source
Available" and "Open Source".

The license matters.  Just making the code out there, but restricting
under various clauses or "you have to be in the club"[1] is not enough.

[1] Or worse, in the case of Audacity, where the new copyright holders
attempted to add spyware and then to stay out of trouble in the
E.U. tried to restrict usage of the software to people over the age of
18 --- in violation of the GPL and the Open Source Definition.

This is why insisting on this distinction is so important, and not
letting people try to weasel out of saying, "the source is available
but we can jerk you around and possibly add extra conditions, and
possibly threaten to sue any competitors" is NOT OK.

	 	     	     		     	 - Ted