Michael Lorrey wrote:
> This is why ANY GUI will always be more practically open source than the
> freest of the free true open source command line operating systems. I
> don't give a crap about the true open source status of the Excel source
> code. Is Spike's spreadsheet editable by myself and everyone who cares
> to participate? Yup, sure is, and MS can't own that.
Sure they can. And recent moves they've been making aren't that far
away from the following:
"We hereby recall all versions of MS Excel prior to the previous one,
and revoke all licenses to use it. We will be sending our purchased
legislation^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcontract enforcement around to ensure
compliance, and ease upgrade to the latest version. Use of the current
version of MS Excel requires explicit pre-authorization of your subject
matter by Microsoft's servers, and explicit agreement that anything
made with MS Excel belongs to us. Our apologies in advance if approval
for those topics that do not make us the most money gets delayed, but
as a business, we must dedicate our resources towards this quarter's
bottom line."
Now, that said, you have some good points about useable open source
products. You need "free of legal gremlins", which open source
delivers, *and* "useable by the target audience", which GUI delivers.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:59:41 MDT