Gartner today joined squabbling by vendors over the meaning, purpose and spirit of open source by declaring that users demand the right to modify and redistribute software code and the resulting products.
In a recent research note, Gartner analysts Brian Prentice and Mark Driver said that some members of the open source software community were concerned about the role that vendors play in supplying and supporting the software. "Vendors increasingly want to tweak the meaning of open source to include, for example, attribution licensing, which says the user can modify and re-distribute the software and make derivative versions based on it only if they give the author credit," Prentice said. "But 'open source' is simply a licensing agreement that allows unfettered modification and redistribution of software code. In fact, it is both a key sign of a healthy open source community and a key benefit to users."