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by cyphar 2803 days ago
> DFSG and the OSD are essentially the same thing, having been written both of them by Bruce Perens.

Right, and I knew this is what you were getting at. I guess my main point is that having a working guideline for acceptable licenses for a distribution makes complete sense (after all of the moral viewpoints have been debated to death you have to ship some code eventually), but using those guidelines as the basis of a movement doesn't really (at least not as much as basing a movement on an a set of ethical axioms). So I would say I favour the DFSG over the OSD purely because of what it is used for and represents, rather than because of the (almost non-existent) differences between the two texts.

But of course, I'm biased since I'm far more in the "free software" camp than I am in the "open source" camp -- purely because I think bringing it back to discussions of ethics is quite important (perhaps more than ever).