Hi William: William A. Rowe, Jr. dijo: > At 01:46 PM 3/18/2004, Antonio Gallardo wrote: > >>If you read the open letters there is clear they suggest an full GPL >>license, because if not maybe it can end (intentionally) in a fork.
> As Noel said already - GPL does not inhibit forking. The license does > prohibit adopting the same name for a fork. If someone forks Tomcat > (which they could do under many licenses) they could not call it Tomcat. AFAIK, Tomcat is not under GPL. It is under AL, and that is a diferent beast. :-D Please read my answer to Noel. > > A forked Java would not be "Java" - although some "Cappuccino" fork > could behave identically and be an improved implementation. > >>Forking the competence is a long know way to win a battle. The UNIX >>history is a good example of how a BSD-style licence can end forking and >>no-one is the winner. > > How do you call BSD code adopted by the GNU folks, the Microsoft folks, > even SCO as a no-win? True it is not homogenous. But we have Linux and > Mac OS/X - both strong OS's - neither would exist without dedicated > personal and corporate interests. I can write nearly identical network > code on all three, because the BSD Sockets layer was 'forked' in so many > directions. Would we be better off with none of this? AT&T's System V > staff might believe so. BTW, Where is the AT&T staff now? It exists as an staff at all? Why? Where is now the AT&T influence around the software development? Sorry, I don't see it. AFAIK, they are selling phones stuff, right? Who win the battle? For sure it was not AT&T. > Forks reflect that folks disagree, and sometimes hit insurmountable > roadblocks and obstacles. The best fork generally attracts the most > interest, but that actually means the best supported/community/docs > and many features beyond simply code. Nice rethoric for an ideal world. I am aware of your point about forking. Note, I am not telling: "forking is evil" or "I don't recognize the effort done by other corporation and the big bucks they put on the Open Source effort". I am not against it at all. Here we are talking about diferent things. Is MS can fork Java they will do it and Java is death. If Java stay just on the Sun side, then Java is death too. This is the point behind my words. Knowing old experiences is a good way to see that it would happen: <snip> In 1987, three years after the success of NFS, Sun lost the war to define the standard graphics interface for the next generation. The winner, the X Window System, was technically inferior to Sun's NeWS offering. But X had one critical advantage; it was open source. Ten years later in 1997, when Bill Joy came to a Linux conference to push Jini as a universal network-service protocol, we in the open-source community told him straight up "You can have ubiquity or you can have control. Pick one." He picked control, and Jini failed in its promise. The contrast with NFS could hardly be more stark. </snip> Source: http://linuxtoday.com/it_management/2004021600226OPSWDV > A forked Java would not be "Java", could not be called "Java", and would > succeed only if the vast majority of the huge Java community walked > away from Sun's effort. If that happened, I'm sure such an exodus would > have been well earned. > > * BSD like license - code may drift from published version, > without being disclosed (closed source). > Published code may be incorporated/adopted into BSD or GPL > licensed forks/distributions. > > * GPL like license - code may drift from published version > without being disclosed to parties other than recipients > (limited disribution.) The idea of limited distribution is not correct. You are here talking about LGPL that is diferent of the GPL. <snip> Using the GPL will require that all the released improved versions be free software. This means you can avoid the risk of having to compete with a proprietary modified version of your own work. </snip> Source: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhyUseGPL Also, <snip_from_the_GPL> if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights. </snip_from_the_GPL> See: YOU MUST GIVE THE RECIPIENTS ALL THE RIGHTS THAT YOU HAVE. I think the above sentece also apply in the case of patents. Best Regards, Antonio Gallardo > Published code may only be incorporated/adopted into GPL > licensed forks/distributions. > > Bill --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
