Hi *,
Hmm... I still feel misunderstood....
Michiel said:
Was there any negative influence from the forking of Poseidon on ArgoUML?
There was (AFAIK) never any code flowing back to ArgoUML, exactly like if
we
would have prevented the fork.
Roy:
The negative influence on ArgoUML was the loss of developers to
ArgoUML and the lack of fixes and enhancements back to ArgoUML from
the organisation.
I disagree that this has anything to do with our license - these guys turned
their hobby into their work - so they abandoned their hobby.
Even if their work would not have been based on ArgoUML, we would have lost
them.
Roy:
Imagine if ArgoUML had had a stronger licence at this time of the
split how much different our progress would have been.
Why do you think that? If ArgoUML would have had GPL at the time, then the
Gentleware people would either
1. have written their application from scratch (i.e. NOT based on ArgoUML),
or
2. they would not have started at all, or
3. they would have to run a completely different business model.
Case 1 would have costed them maybe an extra year of implementation before
they could have put any software on the market - that would have costed them
a lot more money...
Especially for case 3, it is important to realize: Currently Gentleware has
a business based on selling boxes with software. If their software would
have been based on GPL, then they would have to make their money e.g. from
support contracts - that is a completely different business model, not good
for a viable business.
This makes me believe that case 3 would never have happened. Case 1 and 2
are both far more likely.
BTW: Nowadays, such business is much more likely than all these years ago,
as is proven by Roy.
I have no idea what the people at Gentleware think about this issue. What
we do know is that Gentleware has no
financial or legal incentive to share their improvements to their ArgoUML
fork with the ArgoUML community.
If they would have to update ArgoUML, then that would ruin their current
business.
They will have to go out of business or change their business model.
We can't fix that in hindsight but we can prevent it from happening again.
But it seems sticking to BSD will stop at least one commercial
developer from commiting code back to us so I think we do need to
tackle that by a licence change.
Yes, Poseidon is a tool to draw UML diagrams, just as ArgoUML - in fact we
are direct competitors.
And thanks to the case of Roy, the situation for AgoUML is changed:
Roy's application is different: he wants ArgoUML to become part of a
toolchain.
So, if used in toolchains, ArgoUML would most probably benefit from a GPL
type of license.
I agree to go over to something like GPL.
(or EPL, LGPL - do not know which yet)
Doing this, we will stop the Poseidon scenario from happening, which I do
not require (my humble opinion), but I see such scenario as less likely for
the future anyhow, so I do not mind.
BTW: AndroMDA uses BSD license (took me quite some time to find this out).
How do they cope?
Regards,
Michiel
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