Karl Fogel at
:-) Yes, I understand.
I've actually always wondered about those alleged corner cases. The FSF definition of software freedom and the OSI definition of open source *look* logically equivalent to me. Some people have claimed that there are licenses that are open source but not free or vice versa -- well, the Sybase Open Watcom License [1] is the only specific claim I've heard made -- and I've always wanted to get time to evaluate this claim myself. I've not heard what the actual argument is, and there are certainly other occasions where I've heard someone make a claim that a certain license is/isn't Free/OSS, or is/isn't compatible with some other license, and then when I've examined the claim in detail I've found that I didn't agree, or at least that the claim wasn't obviously correct.
Now, even if the two terms were to describe the exact same set of licenses, they could still carry different connotations, of course, and for many people they do. But my own position is that if the freedom is built in to the definition, then that freedom must inevitably become a connotation, whether people wanted it to or not. (I think one can see this happening, at a gradual and evolutionary way, in public communications from the OSI itself over the years, too.)
Anyway, Happy Gnu Year to you too!
Best regards,
-Karl
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