>Eric Engle: Hmm. I can't say I have an opinion, all can be done - whichever
>you all decide, please tell me as I cannot write the contract without this
>term.
Eric,
I think the most important objectives we arrived at during discussion
(correct me anyone if I'm wrong):
- OpenKard, including the sources, must be forever free
- Selling a stack or standalone created with OpenKard must be possible w/o
royalties (this is what basically rules out the GNU license, as Anthony
found out)
- There is, among (hypothetically) hundreds of OpenKard distributions one
offical distribution that we put together. Sort of like Linus Thorvalds's
Linux distribution and we want nobody to produce an OpenKard distribution
that is mistaken with our official one. They must make clear it's modified
Although the first part sounds like PD, the last point sounds (to me as a
layman) like it would require a license for users which says: "It's pretty
much PD, except you have to use another name and make clear you changed it"
>-um, no i really do not get it. You want to share the source code, ok, but do
>you only want to share source code among your associates? and later
>developers? or do you want to share the source code with anyone at all?
I think we want to share with anyone. But only the code, we don't want
them to advertise using our names (both the program's and the persons')
>Which raises the hairy question of what, if any, relationship does
>MetaCard have to this? Distribution? Publicity? I'm happy for their support,
>but to prevent misunderstandings you really need to know exactly what they
>expect/hope/want and what you expect/hope/want. I understand that they provide
>the engine - fine. If that is to have a right to distribute the GUI you (we?)
>develop that's ok by me, but as metaCard costs $995, and as I suppose there
>are around ten potential developers, what does metaCard want for its
>investment? If we / you are explicit about this that may also help coalesce
>your interests and objectives and help you structure your organization.
MetaCard has nothing to do with OpenKard itself. They only donate copies
of MetaCard (it is called "the engine", but basically it's just like the
HyperCard application a MetaCard application +home stack) so
non-programmers on our group can begin creating an editor user-interface
for MetaCard. It is to be made PD or whatever, and MC corp. will ship it
with MC. By that time we will hopefully have finished the OpenKard
"engine", and then all we'd need to do is convert our editor user-interface
into an OpenKard stack. MetaCard gains a better editor, and we can
prototype our user interface without having finished the engine. That's the
deal planned.
>That said, I do think it can be done.
If we thought otherwise, we wouldn' be here.
>Alain: The most important issue for me is that I want
>to be able to use our authoring system to facilitate
>my own development efforts i.e. original works that I
>will sell to earn my living. I don't want anyone to be
>able to take me to court, arguing that my original
>work is instead a derived work that I must release to
>the public against my will and/or that I must share
>the profits from the sale of my work and/or that I can
>no longer sell my work at all.
>
>Grant your partners an irrevocable license to create any derived works from
>the authoring tool and that problem is effectively avoided.
This is what the GNU license doesn't explicitly do. It contains a clause
which could be interpreted to mean that both OpenKard and any stack made
with it (or at least OpenKard standalones) must be under the GNU license
again, which prohibits selling it. That's the reason why we think we need
another license.
Cheers,
-- M. Uli Kusterer
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