[Web4lib] ammendment: free vs. public domain [was vendors and usability]

[Joshua Ferraro]

On Mon, Jul 18, 2005 at 08:50:00AM -0700, Joshua Ferraro wrote:
> When I first started working at Nelsonville, I figured that since most
> libraries are publicly funded they'd be supporting public domain software.
> But instead, the vast majority of folks use proprietary systems.
Mike pointed out (thanks) that my use of 'public domain' in this sentence
isn't accurate. Public domain is a legal term meaning there is no 
license at all, whereas Koha is licensed under the open-source General
Public License (GPL).

There's a good breakdown of the different licensing categories for software
here: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html

Under Public Domain:

"Public domain software is software that is not copyrighted. If the source 
code is in the public domain [...] which means that some copies or modified 
versions may not be free at all."

[... snip ...]

" Sometimes people use the term ``public domain'' in a loose fashion to 
mean ``free'' or ``available gratis.'' However, ``public domain'' is a 
legal term and means, precisely, ``not copyrighted''. For clarity, we 
recommend using ``public domain'' for that meaning only, and using other 
terms to convey the other meanings."

Sorry for the confusion, I fell prey to using a nice-sounding word to
convey my idea and didn't pay enough attention to the meaning -- and 
thanks to Mike for pointing out the distinction.

Cheers,
-- 
Joshua Ferraro               VENDOR SERVICES FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE
President, Technology       migration, training, maintenance, support
LibLime                                Featuring Koha Open-Source ILS
jmf at liblime.com |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha |1(888)KohaILS