[GRASS5] Re: [Fwd: whinging about GRASS again]

[Russell Nelson]

Jack Varga writes:
 > Let me preface this with my understanding.  Correct me please (nicely) 
 > if I'm wrong.  A binary application can have in its EULA that the 
 > application can be freely distributed, without royalty, indefinitely. 
 > Yet it can be available without source code,

This is getting WAY off topic, but you're not the only person who has
made this point, so unless somebody (reasonably) bitches, I'll answer
it.  It's not possible for a public domain executable to be open
source.  It could be derived from open source, but it cannot itself be
open source.  When people say that a binary is open source, they
usually mean that it is derived from Open Source source code.  Public
domain source code is definitely open source.  Does that clarify?

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