Hi Dmitry Thank you for the concern and the kind reply. Your questions pressed on a sore point in an ongoing disagreement.
There is no question but that the EMC2 project is intended to be "open source" but more than just open source it is intended to carry with it the expectations expressed by the GPL-2. As Alex pointed out there is a statement to this effect on the site. During the years when the repository was hosted by sourceforge, there was expectation that the files would be consistent with their free cvs copyright rules. That is no longer a requirement at cvs.linuxcnc.org. I am probably a bit less demanding when it comes to GPL than most of the guys. I really like the idea that any user can have access to the source that makes the system run. Without the freedom and protection offered by GPL licensing we would not have nearly the range of abilities we have. I also recognize that there may be a few areas like HMI/GUI, kinematics, and hardware drivers where some protection of proprietary interests will allow commercial businesses to participate more fully. I see two levels of this kind of commercial participation. The one is a binary added by a company to the open source systems. The company holds the code and restricts access completely. Without the binary the open source code will not fully run the specific hardware provided by the company. There are many models of this kind of interaction between open source and proprietary. The soft modem stuff comes to mind. There is a binary provided by the chip maker. It's abilities provide an interface between proprietary and open code. I also see a less restrictive but still proprietary approach. The code is available for study but not for change or use without permission of the author. For these kinds of code we need the ability to place them in our CVS. Hope this helps. Hope it also explains why I don't believe that we must or need to carry out an audit of the copyrights carried by each of the files in our repository. Ray On Sun, 2007-01-28 at 02:58 +0300, Dmitry M. Shatrov wrote: > Ray Henry: > > <rant> > > Hey guys, before we spend a lot of time chasing the thoughts of someone > > working against our project we need to think seriously about what the > > GPL, LGPL, and GPLD is supposed to do for us and what these licenses > > really require of us. > > I don't want you to get me wrong and to treat me as one of those > "someones". The only place I've mentioned this uncertainty was #emc IRC > channel, and I'm a bit surprised by the impact. I hope that you won't > count development of a different CNC system as an offense of any kind. > > Of course it would be nice if there was a clear license statement at EMC > web site. I couldn't find one after a short surfing session. > > Regards, > Dmitry Shatrov, MyNC developer. > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT > Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your > opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash > http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV > _______________________________________________ > Emc-developers mailing list > Emc-developers@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Emc-developers mailing list Emc-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers
