On Fri, 6 Aug 1999 DeRobertis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> 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.
Exactly.
> 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.
Right, again. We don't really care what license is approved, just
that *something* get approved. It's crucial to the long-term survival
of the project, as well as to the shorter-term results we'd like to
see (an open source development UI for MetaCard).
(big snip)
> >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.
I think leadership is the core of the problem here. Most other
successful open source projects I'm familiar with began in a way
fundamentally different from this one. In the others, *one* person
did the original design and implementation work. That person
therefore had complete freedom to set the licensing terms and even the
structure of the organization. Only after the project was firmly
established did other people join in and take over the bulk of the
work. The only exceptions to this rule that I know of were projects
taken on by an established group, like the X11 work at MIT or the BSD
work at UC Berkeley. Trying to establish an organization and a
product design and product license all at the same time is a pretty
huge task.
Unfortunately, we seem to blessed with (at least) three co-leaders
here (Uli, Anthony, and Alain), none of which can (or even seem
inclined to try to) make final decisions by themselves. While I would
have thought that my earlier suggestion to call a vote via email would
have been a reasonable way to settle the licensing and organization
issues, for whatever reason it didn't happen. So, I now humbly
suggest plan B: appoint a dictator and give that person complete
discretion on these issues. Would that work?
Regards,
Scott
********************************************************
Scott Raney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.metacard.com
MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that...
