Hello Mathias, There is a lot of PR in this issue floating around the internet these days, most of it coming from Sun. Its clear to me that the goal of this PR is to maintain the status quo, i.e., ensure that contributions to the project keep coming in, and that the contributors sign the JCA or its successor the SCA that assign copyrights to Sun.
I think both Sun and the project are poorly served by both the JCA/SCA and the current PR campaign. For starters, I think the JCA/SCA discourages contributions. I myself would not sign the JCA/SCA assigning copyright for anything but the most trivial code, and as we have seen, neither will Kohei and I'm sure neither will many other developers. Sun can try to spin it a different way or try to "sell us" on the JCA/SCA, but for many developers, you are not going to succeed. I have carefully read all of the rationale for the JCA/SCA, including the most recent blog post from Simon Phipps at http://blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/sca_r_office. In my opinion, none of these rational hold water. The same things could be accomplished by asking contributors to assign joint copyright to a non-profit foundation rather than to Sun. The one rational Simon offers that is a little bit different than the usual is the following: "In many cases (including some very well-known open source projects) [the JCA] also allows the original donor to offer commercial offerings, thus ensuring the project continues to have engagement funded by its major participants." I myself to not begrudge Sun its efforts to maintain a commercial version of OOo. Again however, the same thing could be accomplished with code that is under the LGPL. In other words, a Foundation chartered to maintain the copyrights in OOo could insist that all contributions included in the official OOo build be licensed under the LGPL, and this would be sufficient to allow Sun to continue producing and distributing StarOffice. The alternatives I see here are just what I mentioned in my prior post. If Sun continues to insist that all copyrights be assigned to it, then alternative methods of contributing will be created. These alternative methods might include alternate distributions or forks that accept pure LGPL code, or possibly even GPL code or code under other licenses. This I think is inevitable. In my opinion, the best course of action for Sun is to set up a Foundation to hold joint copyrights from contributors. That at least gives Sun a chance to negotiate for all contributions to be licensed under the LGPL. If Sun does not do that, you might find some future contributions are offered only under the GPL, and Sun would not be able to use these in StarOffice. The much better arrangement for Sun, I think, is to try to keep all contributions under the LGPL. I offer this suggestion as something to think about. In the meantime, I would like to make one comment. Kohei is the author of the "solver" code and owns the copyright. He has the absolute legal and moral right to determine the terms of his contribution. He has extremely generously offered this code to the world under the LGPL. The LGPL is a fine open source license. It allows virtually unrestricted use of the code, for free, while guaranteeing that any derivatives also remain free. It embodies some of the best aspects of the open source movement. I find it very admirable and commendable that Kohei has so generously offered to make his code available under the LGPL, and I find nothing to criticize in this decision. Recently however I have read some rather disturbing comments on the internet that Kohei is somehow a "bad person" for offering his code under the LGPL, and furthermore, the only way for him to become a "good person" is to sign a legal document that assigns copyright to Sun Microsystems. This I believe is unprecedented in the open source movement. Is that what we have come to, that a person who offers code under the LGPL is subject to criticism? That if he refuses to sign over his copyright to a proprietary product then he is somehow a "bad person". I am quite frankly, amazed, stupefied, flabbergasted--at a total loss for words--by the recent comments I have read. In the part of the world where I come from, it is very common for code to be offered under dual licenses. An open source license such as the GPL is offered for free, and a standard commercial license is offered for a fee to companies who want to use the code in a closed-source commercial product. Companies that want to use the code under the commercial license simply pay the fee, and then they have that right. Specifically with respect to Kohei's solver code, Sun has stated that it will have to be completely rewritten by someone else, with copyright held by Sun, in order to be included in OpenOffice.org. Taking that statement at face value, it appears then that Sun is willing to spend $50,000 plus in engineering time just to have a solver that it holds the copyright for, as opposed to a solver that it is allowed to use under the LGPL. If in fact Sun believes that holding the copyright to this code is worth $50,000+, then I suggest you simply offer this to Kohei. AFAIK, he has not in any way asked for this or suggested it, but where I come from, that is considered fair. On the other hand, what is not considered "fair" is for anyone to try to berate or intimidate a person into signing over his copyrights. This type of discourse is not a pretty sight and I do not think it will be viewed positively by most open source developers. In the meantime, I again commend Kohei for very generously offering his code under the LGPL, and even if Sun will not include it in the official OOo distribution, I hope it is made available either as part of another distribution, or as part of a separate download, i.e., an add-on. Again, I hope that Sun will spend some time thinking about the above suggestions. I think this would benefit both Sun and the project in the long term. Thank you, Allen --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
