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> Making your software hard to interface with is making it less open

We are using two different definitions of "open". Back in the 80's Unix was considered "open" because you could compile a program for various flavors and the various flavors could share data on the same network (contrary to other platforms of the time). GCC is open not because it runs on many platforms, but because you can freely inspect, change it and redistribute it. Those are two completely different meanings.



These are both important. Sometimes the letter of the law is convenient. Needing to resort to the letter of the law is not "open" -- a 3rd meaning!




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