[Fsfe-uk] Financial Times: "Open source should not be a free-for-all"

[Martin Keegan]

Today's Financial Times has a prominent piece titled "Open source should
not be a free-for-all". It's surprisingly good. At every turn, author John
Gapper appears to be about to write something really annoying (about SCO,
the word "hacker", the viability of free software business models, the
FSF's policies on copyright assignment and so on), and then manages to
avoid doing so.

The point of the article is basically that SCO has scared Linus into
documenting the legal provenance of contributions to the kernel, but that
hackers are rebels and mightn't put up with this. On balance, the article
comes down against this conclusion:

        "The moral is that hackers will obey the injunctions they
        respect".

Gapper praises Linus for a step towards the "kind" of code accountability
the FSF can claim. Nicely, he thinks that the overhead will not
unduly constrain hacking "in the better sense of the word". The
non-theological treatment of various free software holy wars is quite
nice.

Anyway, text of article is available in electronic form, but time-limited
free registration is required to view it: 

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1085944408952&p=1012571727126

Mk