From: Jon M. Taylor <taylorj@ecs.csus.edu>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 15:46:25 -0700 (PDT)

Re: Licenses and stubborn people

On Wed, 16 Sep 1998, Hartmut Niemann wrote:

> Hi!
> I have been pushing this topic a couple of times, and every
> time I get the impression that after 40 messages everybody thinks
> all are agreeing on *his* opinion or something like that.
> 
> We have been thru all this before, but we have not reached 
> anything yet.
> We are exchanging the same arguments over and over, and there
> is no sign that anybody of the avid posters moves one angstroem.

	This does happen every now and then.
 
> Hey folks, without a license agreement we will get NOWHERE!
> We won't get a beta release out ANYTIME.

	Huh???  People have been asking for a **NEW** license "agreement". 
Everything right now is GPL or LGPL.  If this state continues, it might not
be optimal but it will be FAR from "nowhere". 

> If nobody of you moves his *** and is willing to find a consensus,
> this project will die a horrible death. This year.

	I don't think so.  I see more energy in GGI now than I have seen in 
a long time.  Look back over the snapshots (discounting the removal of 
GGI Console and the old KGI) and tell me that we are heading for a 
horrible death.
 
> I was called 'radical' by someone (and I am proud of it :-), so I can say
> it again:
> Some day (SOON!) we'll need a license under which we'll publish
> our code, 

	We already have a license, [L]GPL.

> and all those who don't like it must decide for themselves
> whether they leave or not. 

	True, although maybe not the way you intended.

> We lose less than five coders for *any*
> solution proposed yet. Or we lose a complete and interesting project.

	Open Source development doesn't work that way.  GGI will be around 
until the end of time, even if it is all GPLed, as long as people want to 
hack and use it under Linux.
 
> And IMHO those people who do the programming
> should have the power to decide the license (Andy, Steffen, Core, Marcus,
> Jason, Andrew, Matthias, Jonas, all the driver maintainers I forgot).

	The people who write the code should (and do) have the power to 
decide the license(s).  Of course they need to cooperate in this to 
arrive at one consistent license, but can we have a little less of the 
overbearing top-down management please?
 
> <personal attacks>
> Dear Wouter! If we can't agree on a license at all, the BSD crowd
> won't get ANYTHING. If we agree on something *GPLed, they *can*, if they
> want, use it. BTW: Is there an indication that they are
> all as stubborn as you?

	If the BSD people have a problem with an [L]GPLed KGI[con], that
makes perfect sense.  If they have a problem with LGPLed LibGGI *just because
they don't like the LGPL*, I consider that the height of absurdity. 
Arbitrary ideological license issues should have zero part in this. 
Functional issues only, please.
 
> Dear LGPL-rules crowd!
> You say we want that improvements to our code must be free.
> We will NEVER be able to enforce that! Or would you (yes, you, the 
> GPL-liking hobby programmer or lurker) sue Caldera, Red Hat, Sun, 
> Microsoft, IBM, anybody for copyright violation?

	Yes I would.  I would hope that the community at large would back me
up (If they wouldn't the entire GPL is dead).

> So (L)GPLing software is  a political statement. It's not legally
> enforceable I believe.

	You mean it is not *practically* enforceable.  GPL has not had a 
court test yet, but that is hardly a reason not to use it.

> </personal attacks>
> 
> I am tired of this discussion. 

	Me too.  This mess got started (IIRC) because Andy was mad at Linus 
for his intransigence WRT accepting KGI.  So we started looking as 
porting KGI to FreeBSD, and thus the GPL would not work so we needed 
something else.  GGI Console is quite Linux-specific and LibGGI was never 
even an issue until some people began to object to the LGPL on 
ideological grounds.  I do not see why we are even discussing LibGGI here 
at all.

Jon
 
---
'Cloning and the reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step in 
becoming one with God.'
	- Scientist G. Richard Seed