On Oct 15, 2012, at 6:57 PM, Shane Kerr <shane@time-travellers.org> wrote:
Open source developers (including me) have said "we would like a place to discuss open source tools within RIPE".
I have not heard any proprietary developers say the same. I don't know why, but I guess because they already have plenty of venues to connect with users and each other.
I believe this is a reasonable argument. In this context I wondered what is so specific about the tools that makes it necessary to call out the nature of the distribution license. Jim summarized my question quite succinct: Isn't this a working group to discuss tools, exchange ideas, and approaches? The question that I am trying to answer for myself is what is the primitive that you are trying to capture with the strong emphasis on Open Source. I think what you wrote above, and what I've seen in thread, contains part of the answer: there is a cooperative and bottom-up mindset with and between the developers and users of these tools, a different type of relation than the traditional proprietary vendor-custommer relation. Oh, by the way, if we are going to exchange ideas about implementation, do we need an IPR policy? --Olaf NLnet Labs Olaf M. Kolkman www.NLnetLabs.nl olaf@NLnetLabs.nl Science Park 400, 1098 XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands