Wim Godden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Nick Burrett wrote: > > > It might be worth looking at the Red Hat (or formerly Cygnus Solutions) > > approach to development of the GNU C/C++ Compilers. Red Hat are major > > contributors to the GCC development, however they are still contracted > > by customers to develop optimisations or processor ports. After a period > > of one or two years these features are often integrated into the main > > GCC source tree for the whole community to benefit from. > > True, but not the other way around. They haven't said : we've added lots of source > code to GCC, now we're going to make it closed source. And that's exactly what > Idaya is doing now.
Wrong. Idaya have added lots of changes to FreeVSD and kept it *Free Software*. Idaya have created ProVSD which is based on FreeVSD with some enchancements. FreeVSD is *still* Free Software. It *always* will be. > > Idaya needs a source of income. They should deserve some returns for > > the work that they have input, otherwise they cannot afford to sponsor > > the project. Then the project dies completely. > > Well, the people who founded Idaya should have thought a little more about what > they were going to do with the company. Now they've founded a company, hoping to > sell just the extra services for FreeVSD. Since that didn't seem to work, they're > now violating GPL by creating ProVSD. Since they own the license to FreeVSD, they have the right to revoke the GPL at any time. Therefore they are perfectly entited to re-license ProVSD to whatever they like. Yes, they must remove the code changes by developers who have not signed a copyright disclaimer. But what grounds do you have for suspecting that this has not already been done ? > > > The only argument that I've seen so far on this topic is that the > > community is unhappy because Idaya is selling a piece of software > > which includes their own extensions and some minor contributions from > > the community on this list. So what ! If you don't like this, then > > why not request that your changes be removed from the source tree ? > > I don't think anyone minds if their source code is in a different project, as long > as that project is again released as GPL. If it's not, the source HAS TO BE > removed. People don't even need to request it, Idaya is legally obliged to do it ! Correct, unless they have signed a copyright disclaimer. > > > > > I hope there is an open source alternative for multi-plexed OSs. > > > > There are already.. But can you be bothered to find it and work on it ? > > Or will you just wait for it to be delivered in shrink-wrapped form through > > your letterbox. > > > > These systems are inherently complex. If done properly, they take > > many man years of work. The systems are targetted at system administrators > > who know the ins and outs of their operating systems, not at end users. > > There isn't much cash to be made from administrators since they can > > usually figure out what they are doing wrong themselves. > > Well, I guess I'll find out real soon. I've thrown away the patches I made to > FreeVSD in the past weeks and simply started from scratch now. If I'll open source > it (that's an IF there, but at least I'm honest about it), it'll stay open source. Until you decide that there's no money in it. Writing a project for fun is great. Releasing a project and seeing hundreds of people profit from your work, when you receive nothing particularly significant in return is not so great. Nick. ------------------------- The freeVSD Support List -------------------------- Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=subscribe%20freevsd-support Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=unsubscribe%20freevsd-support Archives: http://freevsd.org/support/mail-archives/freevsd-support -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
