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. This is how GNU
does it, and currently the only means by which we can guarantee that OC
will stay free. Everyone who has the code may use it. Even M$, yes, but we
can keep ditributing our own copy. This also immediately allows forking and
it also allows that changes to one fork be used by another one, too. I
would rather see someone like M$ making money off OC than having OC not
happening. I want the HyperCard concept to survive and spread, and I want
it to be free. As long as there's a free OpenCard somewhere, I don't care
who sells a copy or earns big $$$.
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.
>Actual legal ownership would I guess belong to some person who signs an
>exclusive licence of that work to the maintainer who is to be decided under
>the rules which are put forth in the organizational proposal. It would seem
>that forming a legal organization to produce OpenCard would work well here.
>Or maybe one of the existing OpenSource companies would do that for us. Or
>an individual could, but it'd probably be messier.
CopyLeft is much easier. We *need* that license, and it should include
CopyLeft for any submissions. If there is dissent, that's ok. There are
disadvantages you have when you fork, e.g. having to maintain two code
bases, monitoring one and applying changes to the other etc. People will
thoroughly consider whether they really want to fork, and will try to
achieve a compromise. It's self-regulating, and if the copyright issue is
resolved, there won't be a problem.
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.
>>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.
>>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.
>>>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.
>>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.
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.
Cheers,
-- M. Uli Kusterer
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