[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> > This license is the same as Sun Community License, or the license for
> > Yast2. You can look, you can't touch.
>
> Hey, I said I didn't want to get into a license war. :o)
Me too; it's not a war, but it's good to tell what the license allows and
what it forbids.
Anyway, it's the core of my interest in the free software movement.
> My main point was that being non-GPL should not be a bar from the main
> distribution if the program is useful or desired. I'm all for educating
You're complety wrong! Being non-free (e.g. GPL or equivalent, say, BSD,
MIT, artistic, etc) *is* a reason to exclude prog from main distribution.
Being "useful" or "desired" is in no way interesting; or else we would
ship MS-Office run through Wine!! (for example)
> or promoting more open licenses from commercial developers and I think
> this guy is half-way there. So instead of "punishing" him, we should
> encourage him to change the license. Maybe he's working now and doesn't
> need the income? Bitching about his license gets us nowhere.
No, his program is here for more than 5 years for sure. He's not half way,
he just decided this.
"Bitching about his license" -> what can we do then ? Following your
thinking, again we should include MS Office in the distrib.
The only answer is "no". We have to make some decision following the
licenses. This type of license is totally against the spirit of free
software. Showing the source brings us nowhere: we can't do anything with
this source. More than that, it's perverse, because it puts many persons
including you in the wrong direction: compromising because "he made an
effort".
No! The sources of XV is in no use to the free software movement because
we can't take advantage of the good parts of the code, which is the core
of interest of this movement.
We have to reject it.
> > That credit is 100% provided by the GPL. We at MandrakeSoft license under
> > the GPL *and* sell our efforts.
>
> One of the reasons that I personally appreciate Mandrake and other
> vendors who do this. Perhaps the reasons that Mandrake does this will
> also encourage him the same way, it's worked for others (i.e. Troll's
> QT).
Maybe. For QT, I don't think so; I think they changed because they saw
both the Gnome project and the Open QT (I don't remember its real name)
project being a threat to them.
--
Guillaume Cottenceau -- Distribution Developer for MandrakeSoft
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/~gc/
