[Freegis-list] open source SEG-Y viewer wanted

[Adrian Custer]

Dear Mr. Stockwell,

First of all an appology. Jan-Oliver Wagner often comes across much more
aggressively than he intends. Having followed him on a list for a while,
I do not think he means to be as harsh as he occasionally sounds. Please
do not take it, or this, as criticism of your work or motivation. I am
always pleased to see people share their work with others and your
coding sounds like (I have not even been to the site) it is well built.
Congratulations.

You are of course right when you state:

> To my knowledge there is no all inclusive legal definition of what 
> constitutes "Free Software".  

While there is no legal definition, there has been a large debate in the
field and the term "Free" has come to have a fairly well defined
meaning. (NB in this context the word is usually, though not always,
capitalized.) The term "Free",  as opposed to other terms like "open
source", is intented to preserve at least the following freedoms:

-access to the source for personal modification
-ability to re-distribute the product *to anyone" possibly with the
restrictuion that none of these rights can be taken away from anyone.
-ability to re-distribute the modified work.

The generally accepted standard for the meaning of "Free software" is
the policy of the Debian group. 

This you undoubtedly know. I wonder though if you are also aware of all
the thinking that has gone into the issue you are grappling with-how to
prevent the co-option of one's work by others. There are MANY people who
feel the same way as you about their code, they don't want it used in
certain ways by certain groups. (The orginal releases of the GNU/Linux
operating system were licensed so that it could not be used by the
military.)  Most projects have found that the preservation of the above
freedoms are enough. When the two individuals you mention tried to sell
your software, they were breaking your license. The GPL solves this by
allowing them to sell the software but preventing them from allowing the
buyer to turn around and give it  away. The net result ends up being the
same, there is no inherent value in the product, only in its
distribution and support.  Essentially your license is taking away one
of the freedoms that is usually granted by "Free" licenses-the right to
re-distribute for some compensation- in order to prevent exhorbitant
prices being charged for software you would like to be cheaply
available. Experience has shown us that Free licenses also prevent this
from happening.

So again, my appologies if this community seemed a little brisk and
thank you for your work for the community at large. I obviously cannot
speak for more than myself, but I think you will find that most people
would agree with Mr. Wagner that this *tiny* restriction prevents them
from calling your license "Free". The emergence of the large body of
work we now consider "Free" has taken a long time and many of us are
quite defensive about both the term and the ideal. I believe you share
the ideal. Perhaps you would consider exploring the question a little
further and deciding whether you still believe that you would call your
license "Free" (in which case we can amicably disagree) or whether you
could acheive the same goals with another license that you would
consider "Free".

thank you for your time,

sincerely,

adrian custer

Dept of Entomology
U.C. Berkeley


The Debian policy is at: http://www.debian.org/intro/free

The Gnu project has its own take at: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/