Bill, Opinions on professionality aside, isn't forking a very expected activity in open source development? If someone can't take Open Source code and make a new (Open Source) product with it, then what is the difference between Open Source and (closed) Shared Source?[1] As long as a given fork adheres to the LGPL, what differentiates a "good" fork from a "bad" one? Or are all forks bad? FWIW, I don't have an opinion about this particular dispute, but am rather trying to learn more about the LGPL, Open Source, and your/JBoss.org's views on them. [1] Assuming, of course, that trademarks, etc. are not violated. - Matt
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Burke [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thu 8/7/2003 1:11 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [JBoss-dev] RE: [JBoss-user] Re: Recent CVS removals
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Greg Wilkins
> Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 8:37 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [JBoss-user] Re: Recent CVS removals
>
>
>
> Firstly a note to the list moderator: This is a request for CVS access, so
> I believe that it is on topic and should not be censored.
>
> Bill Burke wrote:
> > JBoss Group, as caretaker of the JBoss project, has recently decided to
> > remove CVS access committers for a few of our committers. We
> do not remove
> > from CVS without good reason nor without just cause. These are
> the reasons
> > for the removals:
>
> I'll take these in reverse order:
>
> > 3. There is just too much conflict of interest of developers
> working on two
> > different J2EE projects that are being developed under two
> very different
> > open-source licenses.
>
> Surely that is for the developers or their actions to determine? Or is
> this taking the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive action to it's
> logical extreme?
>
> There are conflicts all the time in open source development - between the
> day job and the project - between license types - between duplicate
> projects - between competing clients both using your code - between time
> developing and time to have a life etc.
>
The fact remains that you participated in a JBoss fork. This shows a
complete lack of commitment to the JBoss project and community. You have
lost the trust of the JBoss project admins.
> As the author of Jetty, I have helped it be integrated with
> JBoss, JOnAS and
> avalon among other proprietary projects. I am serving on JSR154 and give
> effort to improve all J2EE containers. I have worked with and submitted
> bug reports and patches for tomcat. I frequently consult to competative
> companies. I believe I have proven that I can deal with such conflicts
> in a professional manner.
>
Participating in a fork of JBoss is not professional. You and other Jetty
developers are listed as CVS developers of Elba.
> JBoss has many users and JBG has many clients that they have encouraged
> to use Jetty/JBoss as a stable and supported platform. JBoss is
> currently
> the best J2EE platform out there and I only wish to continue supporting
> it - and fullfilling the implicit promise made to all JBoss users that
> we will make best efforts to support our contributions.
>
> If you give us back our CVS access - what harm can it be? If we vandalize
> the code, or become idle for a long period - then remove our access.
> But we only wish to maintain our contributions and support the JBoss
> community. The only reasons that I can see for removing us is so you
> can make "no jboss developer" marketting claims.
>
Granting of CVS is a contract of trust between the project admins and
yourself. You have broken this trust. You are free to submit patches
through Sourceforge, but you have lost your CVS privilege.
>
> > 2. More importantly, we have learned that they have forked
> JBoss. We also
> > believe they are preparing to submit it, or some derivation, to the new
> > Apache Geronimo project which would violate copyright and LGPL.
> Our proof?
> >
> > http://sourceforge.net/projects/elba
>
> I'm not exactly up to speed with the full motivation for Elba,
> but it is not
> for submission to geronimo - nor would the ASF accept it if it
> was offered.
>
We are contacting ASF to determine what has or has not been submitted.
JBoss Group will protect any infringement on copyright or LGPL.
> The elba CVS is a totally legal fork of the JBoss code, which after recent
> public legal threats is good to know that it can be done if needed. I
> do know it was motivated by removing a private trademarc from an open
> code base.
>
Trademark, copyright, and LGPL(or similar license) are all an open-source
project has to protect itself from becoming closed source and proprietary.
JBoss Group firmly believes in the spirit of LGPL and will protect against
any violation.
> But whatever, it's got nothing to do with JBoss nor my continuing desire
> to support the project.
>
>
> > 1. These individuals have refused to discuss design issues on
> our public
> > forums. It is crucial to have a public record of design
> discussions so that
> > others may particpate in future work.
>
> I have always been willing to discuss issues on jboss-dev. I, Jan, David,
> Jeremy, Hiram and others have all posted to this forum recently - although
> several such posts were censored.
>
The forums on www.jboss.org have been the designated place for design
discussions since their inception over a year ago. You and your friends
know this and yet made a public statement saying you would not participate
in these forums. The jboss-dev list is meant only for general
announcements, recruiting, and high level, random discussions.
> Besides, even if we have done something to warrent our removal
> from current
> committers, we should not have been removed from the contributors page.
>
We have not removed any author tags from any file within our CVS.
Bill
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