> Anyone interested in doing/attending a BOF at the
> Freely-Redistributable Software Conference in Cambridge next week?

There was a good deal of discussion on this list a while back about
different approaches to the free software business.  If someone is
interested in doing a BOF specifically on the business aspects of FRS, I'd
be very interested in attending.  As a semi-relevant teaser, here's the
abstract of the paper I'll be presenting on Sunday afternoon:

	Licensing Alternatives for Freely Redistributable Software

  Authors of freely redistributable software (FRS) have chosen to distribute
  their work with a variety of different licenses.  Indeed, the variety of
  licenses raises the question of what "freely distributable" means; in this
  paper, we consider licenses that at a minimum allow individuals to receive
  software for personal use without restriction or payment, and that allow
  non-commercial redistribution of such software.  Differing philosophical
  and/or economic purposes have led to a variety of different free
  redistribution licenses (FRLs), varying in activities that they require,
  allow, or prohibit with respect to use and distribution; the different
  licenses in turn lead to different patterns of use and distribution for the
  software, and different patterns of benefits to the parties involved
  (authors, OEMs, other redistributors, and users).  Our analysis of existing
  FRLs gives FRS authors a clearer picture than was previously available of
  the likely consequences of their choice of license; we also speculate on why
  the source-code-oriented FRLs tend to be associated with developer-oriented
  software and the less "free" FRLs with end-user-oriented software.

L. Peter Deutsch          |       Aladdin Enterprises :::: ghost@aladdin.com
203 Santa Margarita Ave.  |   &   Artifex Software Inc. :: tech@arsoft.com
Menlo Park, CA 94025      | tel. +1-415-322-0103 (AM only)  fax +1-415-322-1734
          "Implementation is the sincerest form of flattery."