Re: Woctave-another gui front end

[Sergei Steshenko]

----- Original Message -----
> From: Stephen Montgomery-Smith <address@hidden>
> To: Sergei Steshenko <address@hidden>
> Cc: "address@hidden" <address@hidden>
> Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 8:44 PM
> Subject: Re: Woctave-another gui front end
> 
> On 12/20/2012 12:20 PM, Sergei Steshenko wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  ----- Original Message -----
>>>  From: Stephen Montgomery-Smith <address@hidden>
>>>  To: address@hidden
>>>  Cc: 
>>>  Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 8:09 PM
>>>  Subject: Re: Woctave-another gui front end
>>> 
>>  [snip]
>>>  And by the way, what is this difference between "open source" 
> and 
>>>  "free"?  
>>  [snip]
>>>  Stephen
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  Restriction/strings attached.
>> 
>>  There is free as in beer, and free as in speech, and both.
>> 
>>  GPL is the least free for users and the most protective for developers, by 
> the way.
>> 
>>  Regards,
>>    Sergei.
> 
> But when I have written what I consider to be open-source software, I
> almost always release it under a BSD license.  So by your collective
> definitions would it be accurate to say that all this time I have been
> writing free software instead of open-source?
> 
> To put it another way - instead of correcting people who say
> "open-source" by saying "no, its not open-source, rather it is 
> free"
> wouldn't it be better to say "yes, it is open-source, but more than
> that, it is also free"?
> 
> Or are their parts of octave that are genuinely free but not open-source
> (that is, binaries are available for free download with no strings
> attached, but the source is not available)?
> 
> Or maybe the BSD license is also considered too restrictive?
> 
> By the way, I do greatly prefer a BSD license rather than GPL.  I do
> agree with people who say GPL is overly restrictive.  On the other hand,
> if other people want to release their software under GPL, I don't feel I
> have a right to stop them.
> 
> Stephen
>


According to my _biological_ understanding of freedom BSD license is more free 
than GPL.

Regarding open source but not quite free - have a look at METIS: 
http://glaros.dtc.umn.edu/gkhome/metis/metis/faq?q=metis/metis/faq#distribute .

Regards,
  Sergei.