My thoughts on these issues follow. Note that I intend to write for sale add-ons. 1) I don't care about this. I would be writing and add-on to try to make money so that I could focus on JBoss related work. I don't care that the add-on source will be available to JBoss at some point in the future, as it would likely be available from day one. 2) It should not, and in general cannot as there can be competing implementations of the same functionallity. 3) I don't believe there should be any non-compete agreement at all. If I write an add-on for a bit of functionallity that does not exist and a developer comes along with a free version they want to commit, they should be allowed to even if it is inferior as long as it meets the normal standards for inclusion(doesn't break existing code/testcases, etc.). Obviously I don't think revocation of JBoss CVS R/W should be a requirement as now I am either a commercial JBoss developer that only imposes load on the non-commerical JBoss developers by submitting patches, or I am able to be both. As for discouraging free efforts that compete with existing for sale add-ons, I don't believe there should be any non-compete agreement at all. Forget the case of a buggy add-on. Assume that the for sale add-on is the best there can be because it uses novel self adapting code that reads the specs and updates itself to be perfect in every way for any use case, but sells for $0.01. The fact that it sells for one cent is sufficient justification for a competing free offering. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ole Husgaard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "Jboss-Development@Lists. Sourceforge. Net" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Jboss-User@Lists. Sourceforge. Net" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Lawrence E. Rosen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2001 11:42 PM Subject: [JBoss-user] Re: [jboss-business] ADD-ON PROGRAM (Please READ) > Hi, > > Nice to hear your thoughts on this. Mostly they make sense > to me, but I have a few points and questions: > > 1) > Does it really make commercial sense for an add-on vendor > to commit to giving up the exclusive rights to their > product after 18 months? > If I read you correctly, all they get in return is another > sales channel (JBoss web site) during these 18 months. > > 2) > Will the JBoss project bind itself to adding the source > from the vendor add-on after 18 months? > I think that could be a problem, if something better > under LGPL turned up during the 18 month period. > > 3) > As JBoss is under the LGPL license, you cannot legally > forbid any third-party from creating a competing add-on, > and distributing it with JBoss. > If a third-party is distributing such an add-on under the > LGPL license, this raises some questions to me: > - Will CVS commit (and thus inclusion of the Free add-on > in JBoss) be refused, due to your agreement with the > commercial vendor? Will it also be refused if the Free > add-on has significantly better performance or more > features? > - If the third-party is involved with the JBoss project, > and distributes the competing Free add-on seperately, > will that have any consequences, such as JBoss CVS R/W > revocation? > Personally, I would be _very_ reluctant to start working > on a Free competing add-on, as I think we should try to > respect the support for JBoss that commercial vendors > show by selling add-ons (even if no agreement between > JBoss and the vendor), BUT: If I need the functionality > of the vendor add-on and it has significant bugs that > are not fixed, or the vendor add-on is not updated so I > have to go back to a 12 month old JBoss version to make > it work, I _might_ consider creating a competing Free > add-on. > > > I think it is important that we get these issues sorted > out now, to avoid trouble later on. > > > Best Regards, > > Ole Husgaard. > > _______________________________________________ JBoss-user mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jboss-user
