On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 7:44 AM, DaB. <ts@dabpunkt.eu> wrote:

Am 30.08.2013 00:08, schrieb Erik Moeller:

> lack of compatibility with other licenses

good luck with using GPL-code in a BSD-project, or CC-text in GFDL-document.
Mixing licenses are problematic most times, no matter if
open-source-ones or proprietary ones.

And Wikimedia was not founded ON free-software, but WITH free-software –
because it was the cheapest solution. Or does somebody think we hadn’t
use MySQL if it would have been only gratis and not open-source?

And bitkeeper is very good example: Was the Linux-kernel unfreeer than
today? No it was not. It doesn’t matter what tools you use to create
free content. „Entscheidend ist, was hinten raus kommt.“.

(A funny fact is that Merlissimo and I use Thunderbird on Linux (free
software on a free OS), while Ryan and Erik use Google mail (a gratis
and non-open-source web-service)…).

Indeed. I'm using OS X on a Macbook, too. That said, all code, blog posts, presentations and documentation that I write are open source and open content. My laptop and email aren't tools that anyone but myself depends on. I could replace them with anything or they could just disappear and the movement would keep going. No one needs to fork my personal tools.

If there's a crucial bot or tool that uses a proprietary license and the benefactor decides to revoke its license, what do we do?

My feeling is that everything supported financially by the movement that is necessary for it to operate (which includes tools and bots that users depend on) should be open source so that it can be forked, just like the content and the infrastructure.

- Ryan