On 06/04/2011 08:34 AM, Norbert Thiebaud wrote:
On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 6:01 AM, Sam Ruby<[email protected]> wrote:
Let me start with a request. If we are going to have a productive
discussion, it would be best if it were done using respectful terms. If,
however, as described below it is the intent of TDF [...]
we can start by working under the predicat that, unless specified otherwise,
any comments are the author's own and not representing anybody else?
I accept that predicate, but will not that it is orthogonal to my
request, which I will make again: if we are to have a productive
conversation please try to do so respectfully.
OpenOffice.org is not uniformly licensed. [..]
If is licensed to many under one license, and LibreOffice has continued with
that license. It is licensed to others under a different license.
I thought we were talking about FLOSS here... not about what
proprietary forks may or may not have done.
The Apache License was explicitly designed to support Free and
proprietary use alike. Note that while many use the term proprietary in
a pejorative sense, I won't shy away from using that term as it is accurate.
I believe that the key phrase in that comment is "objections to contributing
code to be used in proprietary apps". A fundamental goal of the Apache
license is to satisfy the needs of those that wish to include the code in
Free and proprietary software alike.
Yes, I am aware of that 'feature'. I just happen to consider it a bug.
We clearly disagree on this point. That's entirely OK and honest.
I believe that if we want to attract everyone alike to contributing to a
common code base -- wherever it resides -- then we need to establish this as
a common goal.
How exactly encouraging proprietary fork will attract contribution ?
you are relying on the ethic and moral sens of corporation ?
If only we had real life examples to give us clues on how realistic
that is... humm...
The ASF is full of successful examples of this. IBM WebSphere and
Apache httpd is one such example. There are countless others based on
different combinations of companies and products.
If we do this, clearly there is much work that would need to be done. It
will involve getting the consent of those that participate in this
foundation and LibreOffice to relicense their work. It won't be easy, but I
will be a part of making it happen.
The very reason I decided to show-up was because 1/ the license was
copy-left and 2/ TDF dropped the copyright assignment.
(of course I found many other reasons to stay... but that's another topic :-) )
So I'd say... yes it won't be easy indeed, but I guess it won't be
harder than to convince AF not to cater to proprietary sink-hole...
No one is suggesting catering. We either find common ground (as you
outline in your following paragraph) or we go our separate ways,
hopefully parting as friends.
But there is another solution, one that has happened in the past:
convince the company with a proprietary fork that if they are truly
interested in community
support and contributions, they should join that community under terms
that protect both our interest, not just its interests.
And I believe that you have just precisely captured why the Apache
License, Version 2.0 is the most appropriate choice. It is fully
compatible not only with GPLv3 and LGPLv3, but also with use in 100%
proprietary software.
Norbert
- Sam Ruby
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