[VPM] APSL v2.0 now qualifies as "free software" according to FSF

[Darren Duncan]

As you know, some parts of Mac OS X (darwin) and other Apple technologies have been made available under an open-source license for the last few years.  

The original Apple Public Source License v1.x had issues with it such that the Free Software Foundation said it did not qualify as "free"; APSL 1.0 had 3 conditions preventing that; APSL 1.2 changed two but 1 was left.  And now APSL 2.0 removes the third.

And so the Free Software Foundation now considers APSL 2.0 licensed works to be actually "free".

Considering their weight in the developer communities, this change should give a significant boost to the number or quality of people working to improve Apple's open source software projects, which should be beneficial for us all.

For a couple references (in the order I discovered them):

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/08/06/apsl/

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/apsl.html

http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/03/08/06/1729213.shtml?tid=107&tid=117&tid=187&tid=99

-- Darren Duncan