At 01:01 �� 26/3/2002, you wrote: >On Tue, 26 Mar 2002, Wolfgang Lenerz wrote: > ><big snip of Dave's comments>
In light of Dave's clarifications I must totally agree with him. The more complicated the arrangement gets the less likely to develop ANYTHING. IMHO the whole point of making SMSQ/E public is to open it up for further development AND attract new users. Now because of the "peculiar" condition of the QL world, it is implied (and I believe that everyone agrees) that there will be a non-written "gentlemen's agreement" on how we are going to proceed with development. Furthermore, I think that we tend to forget that in most real world Open Source situations, money can and will still be made via other means (ie Manual, support etc.). I think that the best arrangement would be the following: 1. Sources should be available to everyone via any means (I do not disagree with the NO FEE, NOT EVEN COPYING one for the sources for the reasons I explained in my previous email) 2. Official binaries are available from official distributors 3. UNOFFICIAL binaries SHOULD be able to be distributed for free. If these are to be sold, a (predetermined) fee should be paid to the registrar/copyright owner etc.. 4. If an unofficial source gets approved for inclusion to the source tree, then it should be distributed from the official distributor (or the coder if a part of his fee -if any- goes to the official distributor) 5. The whole multiple "dams"/"fortifications" in the road to getting a test binary shouldn't exists. Imagine this potential situation. I write a driver for say a usb adapter for the Q60 (can't be done but anyway)... Then I send my source to say John Q. Ler to see for himself how nice it is.... Now say John Q. Ler is either not proficient in assembly or he doesn't have the assembler I used or he just won't use an assembler for more than that one time. They way I understood it, I am supposed first to submit the code back to the registrar, then the registrar back to John who will build a version for himself to test and use... or by buying the official distro. from the distributor. Instead of doing all this... why shouldn't I be able to give my test binary directly to John so he can see if he likes it (as he would if he were getting the sources from you) and save him (and everyone) the trouble of doing the same thing twice? So you see, indeed fine tuning is needed. I have NOTHING against the usual traders NOT losing their income (On the contrary I encourage that solution, since it's the best for everyone) but certainly the details must be ironed out. Phoebus
