On Wed, Nov 01, 2000 at 06:40:40PM -0500, Justin Wells wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 01, 2000 at 01:21:29PM -0800, John McNally wrote:
>
> > It seems you are upset that the ASF has some flexibility in their
> > license, but not enough for your satisfaction.
>
> No, in their license approval process. The license is fine, it's
> a license. I have no big issue with it.
>
> > But you are quite happy
> > with the FSF for having no flexibility at all.
>
> Actually I found the FSF to be much more flexible than the ASF.
> They're helpful people with a clearly expressed philosophy who
> will patiently work through with you how and where your license
> may differ from their views. Assuming you correct your license
> to be compatible with that clearly expressed philosophy they
> are happy to declare it a free software license, or if you go
> far enough, a GPL compatible license. The process is informal,
> friendly, and fun.
The GPL offers far less flexibility (in practice) than the Apache
Software License (ASL is used to distinguish between it and the Apple
Public License). As an example, I point you to an issue with Aladdin
and the GNU readline library:
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/aladdin/doc/Make.htm#GNU_readline
I've used the GPL, and I continue to have a both respect for the FSF,
and the motivies of people who use the GPL. However, I've found myself
unable to justify this particular interpretation of the GPL, which the
FSF has said it would enforce.
> The ASF on the other hand is a quagmire. Near as I can tell a
> bunch of religious nuts hell bent on proving to the rest of the
> world that anything that isn't ASF is wrong, and anyone who does
> anything in any way different "doesn't get it". An altogether
> unpleasant lot of people who are unable to clearly express
> their philosophy and unable to work with other groups.
Justin -- you came into the discussion with a license intended as a less
restrictive version of the GPL. I can understand (and respect) that you
believe in some of the same things which inspired the GPL -- but you
should be honest that you started out wanting to impose various
conditions on the usage of WebMacro requiring redistribution of all
modifications to WM itself. In certain circumstances, it also required
distribution of the source of a combined work under an open source
license. That is similar to the conditions imposed by the GPL, and very
much in oposition to the ideas behind the ASL. I can quote from version
0.26 (which was after at least one iteration w/ the ASF) if anyone is
sufficiently curious and Justin doesn't mind.
> The process of trying to determine what a license would have to
> say to be consistent with the ASF's philosophy proved to be
> extremely frustrating. The people I had to deal with were
> stubborn, and generally rude. Altogether an unpleasant
> experience which left me questining whether there really
> is such thing as an Apache community--or whether it's just a
> bunch of egotistical jerks trying to increase their noospheres
> at everyone else's expense.
While I wasn't involved in any meetings which may have occured, I did
see some of the the e-mail which passed amoung you, Roy, and Jon. Roy
consulted with lawyers with regards to your proposed licenses; I read
several versions of your licenses. I could see that you were attempting
to find some solution other than a compromise on your own principles --
and I can respect that. But Roy told you in very simple terms how you
could have made your license compatible; you weren't willing to do it
at the time.
> > You say the FSF has said the SPL is okay as long as it says the
> > GPL is a 100% valid alternative license.
>
> No they did two things. First they told me whether or not the SPL
> qualified as a free software license in its own right. It didn't
> at first, but they helped me work through it until it did. Second
> they helped me determine whether it was a free software license
> that also would be compatible with the GNU GPL. Eventually we
> managed to achieve that as well.
>
> It was quite an enjoyable, pleasant, and friendly experience,
> which was remarkably different than the bullshit I had to put
> up with from the ASF.
Dealing with licenses taks a long time -- the law isn't simple, and the
issues are important. The folks in the ASF have limited time to deal
with this, and little fondness of lawyers or complex licenses. The
folks at the FSF believe that licenses are the way to protect the
freedom of their software; most of the folks w/ the ASF don't. We think
software will tend to become open source not because companies are
forced into it, but because they will have advantages by making it open.
It is little surprise that the you'd have better luck talking with the
people at the FSF -- given that your did want a license which would use
legal requirements to encourage support of open source software.
> > Are you saying the SPL was modified to say, users of WebMacro
> > are free to use WM under terms of the SPL or alternatively they
> > are free to use it under terms of the APL or GPL
>
> The original idea was to create a free software license which
> was also consistent with the principles of the ASF, so that I
> would need only a single license to keep everybody happy.
Modified BSD is compatible with both GPL and ASL. Roy was very clear
about the basic problem with the licenses which you proposed: all of
them imposed restrictions about redistribution which would affect the
software with which WebMacro was used. You felt that your restrictions
were reasonable -- or that they could be massaged into a form where they
would -- while the ASF's lawyers didn't.
Look -- in the end, failing to come to an agreement about licensing
issues wouldn't have been the end of the world. We couldn't use WM
given your requirements (for reasons which were explained well enough
for me to understand, and IANAL); that's how it goes. I don't know if
that's why Velocity started -- but I can say that the people who are
working on Velocity have continued after you changed to a ASL compatible
license they're excited about it.
Perhaps they're reinventing the wheel for no good reason -- if Velocity
provides no additional advantages over WM, then I'd guess WM will remain
the more commonly used of the two. OTOH, perhaps it was time to start
fresh -- sometimes it's useful to throw away what you've got and start
over.
In either case -- there are certain advantages to having competing
projects. Like it or not (I'm ambivalent about this myself),
competition seems to be an effective way to encourage innovation.
OTOH -- arguing about this (or flaming each other) isn't likely to help
anyone, so far as I can see. That's not my intent; I just wanted to
provide a different perspective. (I may not respond to replies, 'cause
I'm pretty busy, and after a point, this kind of discussion becomes a
waste of time.)
cheers --
Ed, who has met RMS and found him friendly
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