> As to the substance of Nathann's comments, most of this is really an > argument about the GPL, or rather about how many of the potentialities > in the GPL are acceptable to a given community around a GPL product.
Nathann is not only one thinking this. But at least Brendan McKay has gone to opposite direction, as some might remember: "- - Due to the legal nonsense that large package distributors need to worry about, it has proved too much trouble to maintain an idiosyncratic licence. I didn't change my opinion about military use, but - -". Actually, that was exactly the example I was going to use, but figured my post was already long enough :) I hope I wasn't claiming that only Nathann was thinking about this; I usually assume a *very* wide range of opinion, as I stated. But the squeaky wheel is the one you respond to. > As to the substance of Nathann's comments, most of this is really an > argument > > about the GPL, or rather about how many of the potentialities in the GPL > are > > acceptable to a given community around a GPL product > > This interpretation of my comments, if this is what you proposed, could > not be > further from the truth. My problem is not legal. > > Oh, I was fully aware of that! We've discussed it offline before. However, note my clarification, "rather about how many of the potentialities in the GPL are acceptable to a given community around a GPL product". And that is *precisely* what your objection is - that you would rather that all decisions regarding e.g. commercialization (implicit in the GPL potential) be done in one way, while they are sometimes done in another way. E.g., you say in a later post, "could be as easily ignored when it came to decide of how Sage was to be developed". GPL doesn't tell us how to do that, and actually explicitly allows this. So I'm not saying at all that it's about the legality, but rather what *social* norms are allowable in our particular community that are inherent in GPL (or whatever other license). For example, contributions to a number of dual-licensed software must be signed over to the organization. I suppose if Sage had a BSD license maybe it would have been a different discussion, as such communities often have different perspectives on commercialization (or so I gather, that could be an uninformed view). In that sense, would you prefer to have had (obviously, hypothetically) a different license that forbids such commercialization? (That's an honest question, I'm not sure how you'd reply.) You can, and probably will, disagree with this characterization of what's at stake here, but I think it's the underlying issue. As I've said often in the past, everyone should go and read Steven Weber's "The Success of Open Source", especially the parts about governance. Nothing is new under the (open-source) sun. By the way, I agree with Bill and think your other clarification is extremely helpful, because I am sure there are many developers who are in similar shoes as having come in past the point William was as heavily involved in day-to-day things and tickets. His stated view is that SMC (and other, past projects like psage) is 100% aimed at getting Sage proper in better shape. One can believe that or not, naturally. But it's good for old-timers and new-timers to keep in mind the evolution of the project - and think where it might be another 10 years from now! I think there is still huge potential and already a lot of success, so let's keep it up. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
