William "Chops" Westfield wrote:

>> The problem is that if you change the license significantly, and end
>> users get screwed, with very limited access to source, and little or no
>> ability to use that source in any productive way.
> 
> This assumes "end users" and "software" such that source is useful to
> the end user.  In particular, it assumes end users than are
> programmmers.  

In a way, they always are or can hire some. The problem is when they can't
do that to modify the sources, they are at the mercy of the one who wrote
the software. I am still using CodeWright, a quite nice universal code
editor originally written by Premia. Over the years it went through some
hands, to end up with Borland and being scrapped by them a while ago. Now
basically all users are "screwed"; if it were an open source product with
the appropriate license, they wouldn't be. (This is a programmer's editor,
but it could be anything else, not related to programming.) It still works
for me, but the effect of my experience with it is that when I switch, I'm
very likely switching to an open source editor -- even if I should find a
commercial one that's more attractive. It may be more attractive now, but I
may get "screwed" again without recourse.

> And in many cases, the end user is "less screwed" by needing to pay for a
> supported proprietary piece of software than they would be by needing to
> support free source software themselves.  

Of course. But then that user wouldn't have to worry about open source
licenses, so the "screwed" WRT that doesn't really apply to them. They can
get "screwed" in other forms (like the users of CodeWright).

> It is nearly insulting to equate "needs to pay for something" with
> "screwed." 

I think the "screwed" means that the chain of being able to make use of
derivated works of the original software is broken. Say there is an open
source web server. Someone makes some changes to it and doesn't distribute
the source code. Now say that changed server becomes some kind of standard
-- the users of that server can't change that server to fit their needs,
not even the authors of the original software; the chain has been broken,
which in this sense may be called "they're screwed" by some :)  To me it
seems it is the maintenance of this chain that's the objective for much of
the open source movement.

Gerhard

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