Proposed Charter for OpenSource^WTools WG

On Oct 15, 2012, at 6:57 PM, Shane Kerr <shane at 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 at NLnetLabs.nl

Science Park 400, 1098 XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands



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