Ian W. Wright wrote: >Ok, lots of fine talk from people who are mostly interested >in using EMC2 for commercial purposes but where would this >'donation' or 'bounty' system leave the amateur who is >struggling to build a system and the knowledge to use it on >a shoestring? > The "average user" is left exactly where they are today. If someone else pays me to set up their machine, it has no effect on your relationship to the community or the project.
>Surely this was one of the main reasons EMC2 >was released to the world in the first place.. > I don't think so, but it's probably not relevant :) EMC was developed with taxpayer money at NIST, so the code was public domain to begin with. The codebase has since been migrated to a GPL2 license (though you could get the original PD code and do what you want with it). >If a >'commercial interest' paid a bounty or made a named donation >( as opposed to an anonymous donation ) for a particular >feature to be developed, would this feature then become >their property - i.e. bought and paid for? > No. The GPL2 forbids making a derivative work and making it proprietary. My interpretation of the GPL2 is that they don't have to release it to anyone except their own customers, but they can't prevent their customers from distributing it to anyone or from modifying it. That effectively makes anything done to GPL2 code available to the rest of the community, unless the company making the changes and all of their customers want to keep it a secret. >Would it >subsequently be incorporated into a normal upgrade release > > Probably, if it fits with the direction of the project as a whole. >and, if so, would the 'owner' be able to impose restrictions >on its use ( such as not for making the same widgets as the >'owner' makes for sale ) or charge for the inclusion of that >feature? > No, the code must be distributable by their customers to anyone, for any purpose, and explicitly may be modified by anyone and redistributed. >At what point would EMC2 become so largely 'owned' >that it would effectively become commercial software and how >would that affect the developers legally vis-a-vis health >and safety? > > I don't think this is a possible scenario. >It would be a great shame and loss to our superb community >if the development of EMC2 as a freely available resource >hit the buffers because of commercial pressure and because >all the developers started trying to earn themselves a few >dollars by going down the 'commercial' route. > I agree, though I do think the two methods can coexist. There has been ongoing paid development at Smithy (the EZ-Trol interface), which hasn't hampered mainline development at all. I have made a HAL based system for a customer, and some of the fruits of that labor have been ported into the mainline (the GS2 VFD modbus driver was based on modbus work I did for that paying customer) >Jim Fleig's >epistle should have sounded a warning in pointing out the >demands that are likely to be expected when the software is >'commissioned' for a particular situation. > Yep. He's in the position of being a provider, and needing a fallback for support. That's perfectly understandable, and I would do the same thing in his place. >The current state >where our developers are free to improve the software as and >when the muse takes them has to be the most advantageous >system for our overall community. > > I don't think that paid programming prevents volunteer work. What I don't think I want to see is a corporate entity that thinks it should direct volunteers to do things they don't want to do, and doesn't accept things the volunteers actually do. That would certainly reduce community participation and would be a detriment to the project. - Steve ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stay on top of everything new and different, both inside and around Java (TM) technology - register by April 22, and save $200 on the JavaOne (SM) conference, June 2-5, 2009, San Francisco. 300 plus technical and hands-on sessions. Register today. Use priority code J9JMT32. http://p.sf.net/sfu/p _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
