At 5:16 AM -0700 on 8/5/99, Michael Fair wrote:
<snip something about if you don't care, don't comment>
All he said is that your appending to the GNU GPL would leave a gaping
loophole and that, if you wish to do that, just distribute it as public
domain because that is the end result of the modification.
If he did not care -- which he does, btw -- he would not of spent his time
commenting. He said he does not care if we go public domain or not -- he
still gets what he wants for MC. He does care that we do it, because
otherwise he does not get it for MC.
And, if you feel a complain about Scott talking to much is justified, then
by the same standards so is a complaint about the verbosity of the message
to which this is a reply. I don't know if English is your native tongue or
not, but the message keeps on going and going like the Energizer bunny. (It
just annoys me having to sift through it. I don't want to start a flame
war. Consider it an oddly-worded suggestion.)
<SNIP!!>
In other words, you'd prefer OpenCard to be in the public domain. Correct?
>
>Let's see "UltraCard".... they make me pay for a kick ass
>scripting engine and development tool, and on the other
>hand "OpenCard" gives me the exact same kick ass product
>but for free, and they give me the source code.
I think most of us intend to sell the convinience of not having to download
it.
>At the same time, by not concerning ourselves with them
>we gain much more freedom with our licensing issues
>because we don't invent the "perfect" license. We can
>be happy with something close.
I don't accept mediocrity. Period. Neither should you or anyone else. I
believe we all want to write the _best_ xCard varient. Not almost the best.
>As the project grows there will be a time where the
>single to noise ratio on this list will diminish, but we
>can prolong that by keeping the conversation focused
>and becoming rigorous about only responding to
>conversations that are going to move the group forward.
If people come to the OpenCard lists and create excess noise, they can be
booted and banned. No big deal.
>As we practice that, we develop a culture in which people
>are committed to that and further that practice. People
>copy their leaders. And we ladies and gentleman are
>their leaders, they will copy us. If go around in circles
>on things we don't care about, so will they. If we spend
>most of our time talking about what code we changed,
>or gave recommendations to the maintainers of code we
>would like to impact then they will only have those
>conversations too. And those conversations mean more
>code and constructive ideas, which lead to a better
>product.
Yes, but before we can release code and product, we need a licence to do it
under. And we're screwed if we screw up the licence.
We are talking idea. We are making progress.
>If we make a mistake, we simply correct it.
Not if we legally bind ourselves to act otherwise through a licence screw-up.
>If there are
>three ideas on the table, and none are a clear-cut winner,
>let the guys who want to see it their way implement it, then
>we have all three and we can set some compiler options and
>see which one works out best in practice.
I agree.
>I consider these people a scarce resource and would
>rather empower the guy with the mediocre ideas but
>the source code to prove it, then the guy who designs
>the perfect solution but never gets around to writing
>the code.
What about the group of people that includes a man who creates the perfect
ideas and others who code it?
>I say we just follow the guy who says "I will lead the way"
>and if he sucks then we stop following him, and
>start following someone else. It's difficult to be leader
>when no one is chooing to follow you.
Fine. Then start leading or start following. There are two people here who
have written code contributions to OpenCard itself; the person who is
writing the interpreter and the person who is writing the file system. You
probably know who they are.
