At 3:51 PM +0200 on 8/12/99, M. Uli Kusterer wrote:
>This message is a bit late -- I was on vacation and am still catching up
>with 800 e-mails...
>
>>The maintainer should have de-facto legal ownership of the derived work
>>known as OpenCard. (BTW: Whatever we name OpenCard when we have a name for
>>it, it should be a trademark to protect the name)
>
>Anthony,
>
> I wouldn't want that. I'd prefer to have everyone who submits something to
>OpenCard do CopyLeft. That is, they explicitly say I have the Copyright,
>and then say Everyone may use it, and this is irrevocable.
Nope. GNU has you assign the copyright to them. They have legal ownership
of it.
<snip>
I think you'll find this better clarified -- and probably your complaint
rectified -- once you read those 800 messages.
>
> But I would prefer, if the sources were required to be distributed freely,
>and if the engine itself (i.e. the "HyperCard application" of OpenCard) was
>allowed to be copied freely. If someone compiled in proprietary code,
>he/she would have to ship a sharedLib and headers along, or make it a
>standalone.
Why can't they ship source?
>
> If we make OC CopyLeft the whole open source community will benefit from
>OC and who does the work decides what is done, and who doesn't like that
>can fork. I think we can live with this sort of "Darwinism" much better
>than with any voting mechanism. But we can vote if we feel like that.
We are still allowed to fork. Please see the organizational proposal, draft
four.
That is my definitive statement.
>
>>>Do they have or acquire some form
>>>of decision-making rights? How? When?
>>
>>Yes, the fork, and whenever they want, respectivly.
>
> This is what I'm saying.
That's what I said! _Please_ read the proposal.
>
>>>How would you deal with someone
>>>that starts MANY products without ever following through? Despite the
>>>fact that this person contributed, say, the first half-day�s work to a
>>>product, this person would then and forever after make all decisions
>>>concerning the product???
>>
>>No anyone who wants can fork.
>
> Here I disagree. There shouldn't be such ownership. Who does the work,
>decides what happens. Since everyone has a local copy, when his changes are
>undone by someone else, he can take away with his changes if he wants to,
>or convince the other his changes are better.
There must be someone who can say "this is OpenCard," less there be 40
products all saying "this is OpenCard."
All I'm saying is that I get to say "This is Interpreter", but you can
certainly change it and say "This is Uli's Interpreter".
I'm trying to avoid different forks -- and thus different pruducts -- being
called the same thing.
>
>>>>Alain: Does everyone create their own individual
>>>>product(s)?
>>>
>>>Anthony: Yes. But since they are under a licence allowing it, they can
>>>easily be integrated into OpenCard -- which would be controlled by one
>>>person.
>
> Exactly. This license would in my understanding be a CopyLeft licence,
>since CopyLeft is the only means which allows this.
Read the proposal. It is a "copyleft" licence (though not a virus, like the
FPL varients).
>
>>>Alain: So OpenCard will be more like an empty shell, with hooks that
>>>will allow autonomously developed modules to operate seamlessly with
>>>the OC shell and with other modules. None of the parts in the shell,
>>>nor in the autonomous modules, are developed by more than one
>>>individual, and consequently one unambiguous author for each part. Who
>>>knows!
>>
>>Not quite, but, let's give an example. Say we have Interpreter, XBF, a
>>stack engine, and a GUI frontend, and some other stuff. (...)
>
> Anthony, what you described is exactly Alain's question. The trouble is:
>We can't have other ownership than CopyLeft, because bug fixes might be
>considered ownership, too. We'd be at the problem again that we'd have to
>weigh who owns what.
Copyleft is ownership -- it used the copyright system to allow others to
modify it.
I think I've covered bug fixes -- that's what all the stuff about who has
legal ownership is for.
>
> Instead, I'd prefer if we just made ownership unimportant by making people
>lay down their rights and make their code available to the public for free.
>Everyone can use that version, improve on it etc., and if someone wants to
>create proprietary software from their copy, that doesn't hurt us.
In other words, make the whole thing public domain?
That could be done, but then we'd really need a trademark to prevent the
40-different-OpenCard's scenario.
