Hi all, Following the discussions at EIndhoven,here is what has been agreed upon, Tony TEBBY also having agreed to it:
In short: Whilst Tony Tebby will retain copyright over the code, anyone may have a copy of the source code and modify it ang give it away for free. There will also be an official version of SMSQ/E that will be maintained by a registrar and be sold by 2 people, namely Roy WOOD and Jochen Merz. Support for this official version will be part of the price. The purpose for the official version is to make sure, as much as possible, that any change to SMSQ/E for one amchine (e.g. Q60 or QPC) will percolate down to all other machines (e.g. QPC, Q40, QXL etc...) as fast as possible, in an attempt to make sure that we have one single version with the same features (hardware permitting) for all machines. Any change made by anybody may be proposed to the registrar for inclusion in the official version. Ok, the above is the essence of what was agreed upon, for a more detailed version, read on: Official statement ================== 1/ Tony TEBBY retains copyright of SMSQ/E as it stands now. 2/ SMSQ/E will be made available, as source code, to any person who so requests it. The request must be made to the "registrar", i.e. me. The source code will be sent via CD ROM, thus the request must be accompanied by 3 IRCs, else it will be ignored. The SMSQ/E that will be so made available is the SMSQ/E as it stands NOW. Any future additions/changes may, or may not, be excluded from this, since the authors of such additions/changes may state whether they want their source code to be included in the official distribution, or not. 3/ No distribution of SMSQ/E may be SOLD, except for for the official distribution. This interdiction includes that of including and distibuting SMSQ/E in Public domain libraries. Official distributions will be sold in compiled form, possibly together with the official distribution as source code. For such sales, for the time being, two distributors, namely Jochen MERZ (JMS) and Roy WOOD (QBRANCH) have been appointed by the copyright holder. 4/ The registrar, i.e. me, will maintain official distributions of SMSQ/E, one for each machine on which SMSQ/E may run. 5/ Any person may make any change to the source code he feels like. Any person may give away to others the modificaton he thus made, including the official distribution in source code form only, provided this is made ENTIRELY FOR FREE - no charges, not even copying charges, or charges for the media on which this is distributed, may be levied. 6/ Any such change may be proposed to the registrar for inclusion in the official distributions of SMSQ/E. When making such a proposal for inclusion, the author of the addition/modificaton may state whether the inclusion - is to be made only in the compiled form of the official distribution - is to be made alongside, but not included in, the official distribution. Failing such a statement, the inclusion will be contained in the compiled and the source code versions. The author then agrees to the limitations as set out above. Authors retain copyright over their additions/modifications, but when submitting their additions/modifications, they agree that, if they are accepted in any official distribution (under the statements as set out above), the may be included in all other furture distributions (in other words, you can't submit something, which is included, and then some months later attempt to withdraw it). Their contribution is subject to the same licence as the rest. 7/ A styleguide will be maintained by the registrar, to which any addition must adhere. The styleguide will be part of the official distribution End of official statement. ============================ Finally, I would like to add a personal note: A - Some passages of the above, mainly those which result in a limited distribution of SMSQ/E may loook pretty harsh to some of you, especially the proponents of totally open software. However, I consider that there are a few people (like JMS and Qbranch) who are the glue that hold the QL world still together. If they have absolutely no financial incentive to continue, they probably won't. In my opinion, the effect on the QL World could be disastrous. There are also some other people, like Marcel Kilgus, who have put an enormous effort into SMSQ/E, and would like their efforts to be retibuted in some way. Others, such as Peter Graf, have invested much of their time and money to design hardware which is still being built and sold - if no coherent verson of SMSQ/E exists, then the effect on sales could also be disastrous. The above all implies that some incentive exists for people to a) maintain an offical registration b) pour more time into developments beneficial to all versions of SMSQ/E c) BUY the official distribution, to have something coherent and supported. This incentive can only result, in such a small world as ours, from some restriction on the copyright. I HOPE you can agree with this. I KNOW some of you will not. I HAVE donned my flameproof vest... B - I have been appointed as the registrar (more by default than anything else). I will try to fulfil that role as well as possible. As I have already stated in this list, my main aim is to make sure that we have coherent versions for all machines. There will always be "locomotives", i.e. people doing something new for one version of SMSQ/E, which will then also be applied, hardware permitting, to other versions. However, I can not do that work (alone). I NEED the help of some of you (who will be "key developers" for one machine) so that they can implement the necessary changes (if any) for each specific machine. Thus I make a PLEA for volunteers. Obviously, for SMSQ/E running on QPC, Marcel KILGUS will be the key developer. For SMSQ/E on Q60/Q40, the obvious persons would be Claus and Peter GRAF (yes, I know, I'm trying to twist your arm here, Claus and Peter :-) and perhaps also Jerôme GRIMBERT (?)). What about the other machines? Anybody out there interested: QXL (Thierry Godefroy?) Atari ? Aurora ? SuperGoldCard ? C - I will always welcome (with WIDE OPEN arms, believe me) any modification already coded by anyone for inclusion. I must, however, retain the right to reject any code, if, for some reason, this would be unsuitable. However, I will certainly not reject anything, unless for pretty strong reasons (most probably becuse this doesn't comply with the styleguide). (Actually, I probably will never reject anything, because I don't believe that I will get so many things to be inluded....) As you noticed, there will be a styleguide. The purpose of the styleguide is to make sure that we have coherent source code. There is nothing worse, when trying to understand other people's code, than having to go through code that is written in very different forms. Since, at the time of writing, ALL of the code complies with one style (i.e. Tony TEBBY's style), we would really like any new code to comply with that! D - I can already sympathize with people who don't want their additions to be part of the official distribution, since they would agree to a limitation of their own copyright. I shall try to set up a scheme whereby these additions can be distributed (in form of modules, or smply code to be LRESPR'D) alongside the official distribution. E - There will always be a lag of time between one feature coming out on one version of SMSQ/E and then being ported to the other versions. I shall strive to keep this lag as small as possible, but I feel that it is not such a good idea to penalise the one version having the new feature by waiting for all of the other versions to have it. F - Time (or lack of it). It will be a few months before the entire code will be given to me, digested and recompiled etc. Please be patient. Address your requests for new features to me. I will attempt to discuss everything with the key developers to see what can be implemented. G - Is anyone interested in doing a nice documentation package? So many people out there have protested about no documentation being available. NOW is your chance to make a contribution. H- Umpf! This is the longest Email I've ever written. Please people, consider very carefully what is in there. Don't reject it out of hand - let's try to unify our resources to move forward! Wolfgang
