[OSGeo-Discuss] "Free"

[Josef Assad]

Hello OSGeo community,

I am a little new in here, so a quick two line introduction; Ive been
involved with free software for something like 8 years now in almost
all capacities except programming it (much to the fortune of code
quality everywhere). Advocacy, program management, licensing, community
building, etc. Grass roots to enterprise (UN agencies, government,
etc.).

On Wed, 07 Mar 2007 23:08:06 +1100
Tim Bowden <tim.bowden at westnet.com.au> wrote:

> This thread has really mutated but fwiw, here goes:

Yes, this thread has gotten thrown a bit :) Back to the original
discussion around whether it makes sense to let Oracle in given the
proposal Paul showed us. My two cents are:

1. I am missing the point around dissecting the expressions open source
and free software. From my perspective, OSGeo is about the kind of
software which will generally adhere to the four basic freedoms[1].
I prefer the French expression for free software: logiciels libres
(excuse my horrible French). Liberty. What we are seeing from Oracle in
this presentation does not address that core ethos in any manner.
2. Oracle does provide some free-of-charge systems, but that clearly is
neither free software nor open source. In fact, it is debatable whether
their products which are free of license costs are free of costs in
general (cue long-winded discussion on costs of getting locked in to
their platform, costs of requiring more fancy hardware than if one had
gone with more resource-efficient open source systems, etc.)
3. In my mind, OSGeo is what the name sounds like; we are a boolean AND
operation of interest in geospatial systems AND open source. If
Oracle were to be let in simply because they are addressing one of our
thematic interests then I might ping the firefox team and see if they
want in also! :)
4. I am not seeing any explicit nods towards open standards (OGCs
domain, I think) either in the proposal.

I think its great to be inclusive, and I think it is worth taking a
little trouble to help Oracle make a better match to what this
community represents and is trying to advocate. There must certainly be
plenty of clever people there, and if we could give them guidelines for
what kind of proposal they could come up with which gives better
congruency with the twin themes of geospatial systems and open source,
then everyone would be richer for the effort.

What I would not agree with however would be showing flexibility in
commitment to what open source fundamentally is in the name of being
inclusive. This does not mean we chase people off with a stick if they
mutter the word windows, but it does not mean either that we have
proprietary shops roll in and set up stands. In this case and with a
major proprietary vendor such as Oracle, there would be the need to be
extra careful about the way they are brought in since we might be
talking about different kinds of free. That can only confuse people
rather than enlighten them, and we do hope that one of the objectives
is more enlightened people not less :)

There are fields out there where proprietary systems are entrenched and
where the field could not get ahead if the proprietary vendor were not
there; geospatial systems as a field is fortunate not to be one of those
and we seem to have an extremely solid stack. This merits protection
from dilution of the concept (Free) from which this stack arose, in my
opinion.

So, in a situation like this (apologies for rehashing; I want to make
sure my personal position is clear in this matter), I would
emphatically vote in for Oracle but not with that proposal.

Apologies for a long rant!


Josef


[1] http://www.fsfeurope.org/documents/freesoftware.en.html
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