“Earlier this week, Corel upset an Open Source hornet nest by
releasing its beta distribution of Corel Linux with a traditional,
therefore highly restrictive, beta testing agreement. Some open
source advocates took one look at this agreement and immediately
proclaimed it in violation of the GNU Public License (GPL). Corel,
seeing that the matter remained unsettled after saying that
“because the software was beta there was no violation of the GPL,”
has now changed its tune…”
“Some open source advocates find this situation annoyingly
amusing. As one anonymous Apache developer says, “The strength
of Open Source is that everyone can peer-review your code so that
your program is stronger. While I don’t doubt that Corel
supports Open Source, they still don’t get that taking their own
code Open Source from the get go, it would only improve their
programs.”