A new direction for open source

Posted by grouch on Jul 16, 2006 5:06 AM EDT
FCW.com; By Michael Arnone 		Mail this story
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Open-source software developers that move to a closed-source licensing model to help pay their bills can create challenges, but they also offer opportunities for federal agencies, experts say. Federal users who are increasingly reliant on open-source software are paying more attention to those decisions, and they are stepping in to get the outcomes they want.

[Try to find "GPL" or "GNU" or "free software" anywhere in this article. Maybe if the U.S. feds educated themselves better about the GPL, "Congress, the FBI, the Pentagon and the Treasury Department" would not be so terrified that "a foreign company could make one of the government’s primary security tools proprietary and take control of the Snort source code." Snort is GPL'ed, though you might have to dig around the site to discover that, as Snort proclaims itself "open source". It appears that studious use of the term "open source" and avoidance of any mention of the philosophy behind free software contributes to fear and misunderstandings. -- grouch]

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Snort: Jack_ 1 1,084 Jul 16, 2006 8:25 AM

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