[OpenISO] free software tools policy (was Re: Core...)

[Norbert Bollow]

Henrik Sundberg <storangen at gmail.com> wrote:

> > ## Commitment to Free Software ##
> >
> > The software which OpenISO.org will use must be "open" publicly
> > available Free Software.
> 
> It should be enough to mandate open file formats for the tool.

You're right that the justification which I gave in the draft document
for the proposed policy was in fact /non-sequitur/ bad logic.  From
the arguments which I gave, in fact only the "open file formats" 
conclusion follows.

This is not an argument against having a free software tools policy,
but I'm now convinced that such a policy doesn't belong in the "Core
Guidelines" document, rather it should go into a separate "Software
Tools Guidelines" document.

> It's not a specific tool that should be mandated.

Yes, I agree:  Never mandate a specific tool, but specify the
properties that the tool must have and provide Free Software
program code which fulfils the requirements.

Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                      http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG    http://SIUG.ch
Working on establishing a non-corrupt and
truly /open/ international standards organization  http://OpenISO.org