Why Microsoft should reveal SQL Server code

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I quite understand your point John C...

... and I think you understand mine as well, but I want to make certain. Though there are no absolute semantics in the whole of the English language and there is fluidity; there is also a tension between trying to move the language in one direction versus another. You seek a definition of Open Source that includes only limited aspects. I seek one that's inclusive of yours, but also includes some you seek to ignore or class as unimportant. Through colliding these two differing definitions, we find mutually agreeable definitions. That interplay defines the semantic and the semantic constrains the fluidity - you cannot take the language where society, and in some cases legal rights holders, wish it not to go.

That you will factor the wishes of Microsoft to have shared source remain distinct from OSI endorsed license into your argument (future) is good. As I said in the root post I had hoped you would do so. You're not so bull-headed as to ignore the differences.

That said, I've only a few remaining thoughts. They're not particularly important and you can easily reply in e-mail if you so desire. I'm not likely to revisit this thread. Onward:

In another thread you presented the analogy of two brands of car that varied only in whom drove the car. Was this roughly what you believe is the whole of people's contention that the two license classes are markedly different? The driver? The analogy is a very rough one and others have made similar appeals to the inaccuracy of it. Let me propose one that's equally consistent with the current social situation in which you find yourself.

We begin with two cars (Open Source Licenses), which are truly equivalent. We remove parts from one of the cars: first the windshield wipers, then the radio, then the AC, then the windows. Now we compare the two. Can we still say they are both equivalent cars? Yes. So remove more parts. Eventually you will remove enough parts from the car that many someones will opine, "That's not an car because it doesn't perform the function of a car that =I= desire." At that point you need to come up with a description of what the remaining parts are that aren't anymore a car (Shared Source License, perchance).

You wonder why people combat your attempt to draw an equivalency, or at least a shorter mental distance, between the two license classes, when to you it's just so obvious the two are equivalently "like" each other? The reason for the complaints and the tension is simple: enough parts have been removed from the Open Source license definition to create the Shared Source license, that the Shared Source license no longer serves the purpose that complainants associate with Open Source. They will protect those parts that are important to them. Shared Source lacks several, for lack of a better word, grants that are associated with Open Source that for some the Open Source definition is not met and an equivalency cannot be made. (There is also a legal sufficiency that cannot be met, but this is Robert's main talking point and far be it for me to further intrude there.)

The argument boils down to: you and your supporters see the glass as half-full. I see the glsss as half-empty. If the full glass is Open Source, then there isn't an equivalency between the two - part of the contents are missing. That missing part is most inconvenient when trying to create an equivalency.

In your final paragraph you attempt to strike a line of convenience in the sand. Essentially you say it is convenient to relate Shared and Open Source, because people know what Open Source is. However this is not entirely true. Most people really only recognize the aspects of Open Source that are important to them. Often, when people say they know what Open Source is, they work from an incomplete definition: they are like the proverbial clan of blind men describing an elephant.

Let's say that Shared Source is a tree and you're sightlessly examining the leg of the Open Source elephant. To you the two are equivalent. The OSI person, however, who is looking on from a distance, can see the whole elephant and is telling you that you shouldn't ignore the blind guy over there who says Open Source is a snake, or that one over there who says Open Source is a sword, or that one over there that says... get my drift? Open Source has all these features and in its whole is not equivalent to a just a tree (Shared Source). Open Source and Shared source are only like each other when one person picks and chooses the parts they consider important. They are, to the person who sees all the differences quite dissimilar and the comparison as incomplete.

Incomplete comparisons of Open Source to reconcile an equivalency to Shared Source only deepen such confusion. If your purpose is to further confuse people who have an incomplete definition, then congratulations: you've succeeded. You've adequately muddied the semantic waters.

English does indeed have coherent semantics John, within a single dialect. Discussions of different dialects, though interesting, do not however bear on whether Open Source and Shared Source can be equated socially, historically, or even semantically. Wherein enough difference exists that people can still argue that two terms are not equivalent, and the progenitors agree the two terms are not equivalent, and confusion is sown by declaring them equivalent only by ignoring the differing parts of either definition; there is much contention that the two terms are equivalent and equating them is dangerous.

Yes, sadly, by declaring equivalence: you will annoy those people who see the whole elephant if you constrain yourself to just what you consider important. Yes, you will also annoy people if you remove important parts from their car and declare the stripped model equivalent to the original. Yes, you will annoy former legal beagles if you cross the line between proper, defined and legal use of a mark and colloquial use. Finally, yes, you will have your human language corrected if you use terms improperly for any of the reasons above listed.

Those remonstrations are a cross you'll have to bear, I fear. Only by tossing your definition out there to have it battered about do you have any hope of having your definition of Open Source accepted and the prevaling full definition degraded. I would shudder to see the language degraded as such, but I think of it as evolution in action.

I am as much a part of that evolution as you, in our own small way you create disorder and I sweep it back together. I create disorder and you sweep it back together. Somewhere and when a wind will come and blow us both away and our pile of dust with us. Until that day, my friend, keep on thinking and writing and I shall do the same.

Ciao.

PS - this is probably the longest exchange we've had since our days arguing standards and the Microsoft trial. Does it feel good to be back in comfortable demesnes?

Posted by: John Le'Brecage   Posted on: 03/02/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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