Calling all open source developers

[Richmond Mathewson]

Peter Alcibiades wrote:
> Richmond, I am no expert, but isn't it a matter of the GPL?  If its released
> under the GPL, and if source is supplied on demand, its open source.  Now it
> may have been written in a proprietary language, but I think that is
> technically allowed.  Though there will be those who will object, and this
> was at the bottom of the Gnome/KDE wars, where the problem was that Qt was
> not 'free', or not totally free, whereas obviously Gtk was.
>
> It is true, that even if source is available, one of the aims of OSS can be
> subverted if access to the language or tools is restricted, so the purists
> have a point.  But I think, technically, you can have OSS stuff written in a
> proprietary language.
>
> Peter
>   
I am not picking a fight with Open Source; I am pointing out that to 
describe
something which is written using a proprietary language and/or IDE as
Open Source is potentially misleading.

There should be a term whereby, for the sake of argument, were I to do
the following:

Release a standalone and the stacks from which it were built (using
RunRev) as both FREE and ADAPTABLE, EXTENSIBLE by anybody who
wants.

Could be described without using either 'Open Source' or
'Closed Source' (and 'Semi-Open' is as daft as it sounds -
'half-empty', 'half-full', or 'half-baked').
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Certainly, when I offered some stuff to Ubuntu, including original stacks,
they didn't want it (and not because the programs were rubbish) because
they were not TOTALLY Open Source.