On Wed, Nov 01, 2000 at 07:36:17PM -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > 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.
Yes, but I also asked point blank on many occasions what I would
have to modify to make it compatible with the Apache worldview,
and wrote that I would be willing to make whatever changes
would be required to do that. Nobody at the ASF ever expressed
to me any consistent or clear philosophy of what that would be,
and mostly I just got hostile responses.
> 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.
Yes. Like the MPL, which you have accepted as being compatible
with the Apache worldview. Why did that elicit such a hostile
response? The FSF found many things objectionable in the first
drafts of the SPL which I sent them, but instead of going
ballistic and writing nasty messages to me they instead wrote
back clear and well thought out explanations of what was wrong,
in their view. I changed things, sent it back, and after about
three such iterations they declared that my license was now a
free software license.
The ASF was utterly and totally incapable of a similar kind
of discourse. Instead the responses I got from the ASF were
hostile, patronizing, and condescending.
That seems to be the general attitude of the *entire* Apache
community whenever dealing with any external entity with even
slightly differing views.
> 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.
Every single draft I ever submitted to you came with a request
that you tell me in what ways it needed to be modified to be
compatible with an Apache project. Note that I was *not* trying
to draft an Apache license. I was trying to draft a license
that you could work with.
I suggest you compare the failed way the ASF dealt with those
requests to the successful way the FSF dealt with it.
> 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.
I'm not sure what you're referring to. I got lots of feedback
from Roy and I'm pretty sure I incorporated pretty much all of
it into subsequent drafts of the SPL. Possibly not always exactly
as he had written it--frequently I would send things back that
tried to address his concerns in different ways. But I did
address every single concern he ever raised.
The entire process was frustrating, hostile, and unproductive,
compared to what I was able to accomplish in very few days
dealing with the FSF.
The FSF had concerns of a similar magnitude at the beginning
of the process, when they got the early drafts of my license.
But since they were genuinely interested in working through
the process it didn't take long to come to something that
worked well.
> 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.
And yet the folks at the ASF who don't think that licenses are
important are far more religious about licensing issues than
pretty much anyone else I've met. Sorry, doesn't compute.
Also the ASF and related organizations have been willing to
pour man months of development effort into a problem which hours
of talking through could have solved. Again, that can only be
explained by a bitter attitude and a "not invented here" philosophy.
> 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.
But, the ASF supports the MPL so this just doesn't wash.
> 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.
Early versions of the license did that, but after Roy expressed
that concern the license was modified to ensure that wasn't the
case. That was done *precisely* because the ASF voiced concerns
about it.
Note that the messages coming back from the ASF were typically
negative, frustrating, and hostile. Despite that I pressed on
and addressed all of the concerns raised.
> 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.
Sorry this is complete bullshit. Every time a clause was identified
as a problem I would replace it with a *weaker* clause that still
contained some of the same idea. If it was still a problem I would
drop it altogether. I've got the entire thing in CVS so I can
show you the progression revision by revision if you like.
Here's a challenge: Can you find *anything* in the last draft
of the SPL that would have prevented you from working with it?
http://shimari.com/SPL/SPL.html
No it isn't an Apache license, but neither is the MPL. The question
here is not whether you would choose this license for your own
software, but whether you could, without abandoning any of your
own beleifs, link code under this license in to your project.
The goal of the SPL was to allow both FSF and ASF people to
link WebMacro into their projects. The goal was not to convince
any of those people to adopt the SPL for their own projects.
> 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
This has *often* been stated by ASF peopel but *never* explained.
What "requirement" do/did I have that we could not have modified?
Cite something in the last draft of the SPL to back up your point.
> OTOH -- arguing about this (or flaming each other) isn't likely
> to help anyone, so far as I can see.
At this point I'm simply hoping to reform the ASF so that it
becomes a functioning software foundation capable of dealing
with the world. At this point it's not. It's just a code
hosting facility, a fanatical religion and a few badly
written policy documents.
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Justin
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