Like me, Gord's product is also on the eve of its release. Oh, what a feeling! What a rush! The last time I felt like this wasn't all that long ago, actually. At the time, Ed blogged about how it felt like the end was nigh. Well, that end has since come and gone, and now everybody knows what Ed was really talking about. Personally, I think he should have entitled his farewell blog entry "So long, and thanks for all the FOSS".
Or is that FLOSS? The product I'm about to release is based on an open source platform that, believe it or not, isn't Eclipse (gasp). Their approach to open source, dubbed "professional open source", is somewhat... different from that of Eclipse. It seems ironic (at least to me) that a platform which boasts freedom from closed, proprietary software would switch to a more restrictive license mid-stream... it's almost like it was part of the grand plan all along.
So what does 'open source' really mean, then? According to the Open Source Initiative (OSI), which officially owns the definition, the distribution terms of open source software must comply with ten criteria. The OSI maintains a list of the open source licenses which have successfully gone through their approval process and comply with these criteria; both EPL and that other license are on it, as are many others. So what's the big deal? Just ask one of the customers or OEM partners who, if they want to adopt the next major version of said platform, may be forced to decide between releasing some of their software under the new open source license and purchasing a commercial license for the platform...
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The question should come up, then, how critical is it that it remain Open Source? Is it possible and worthwhile to go back and fork a prior release?
It may be possible (in some cases), but not likely worthwhile; doing so would forfeit many of the benefits that attracted the customers and OEM partners to the platform in the first place. :(
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