I'm not sure whether I should be posting this message. Spokesperson isn't my real job (I'm an engineer), but the people whose real job it is may not be able to respond on debian.devel in time to avert the weekend flamefest I'm dreading. Though perhaps part of the problem has been that people have been hearing from too many spokespeople and not enough engineers. Regardless, what follows should in no way be construed as any sort of official Corel position. It's just me talking.
I'm one of several dozen people working on open source projects at Corel. As I see the postings here and on slashdot claiming that we're trying to 'pull one over' on the community, or that we're just freeloaders and clueless to boot, I wonder whether people even know what we've actually contributed? We've been working *really* hard trying to get Linux in the hands of the average desktop user, and we've released *everything* we've done under open source licenses (much of it under the GPL, some under our version of the MPL, and some under the BSDish WINE license): - All of our setup code - our low-level setup API, hardware and configuration detection code, our setup UI, our partitioning tool, our graphical LILO, etc. - Our written-from-scratch file manager, with integrated samba, ftp, and NFS browsing. - Our graphical front end to APT. - Our improved KDE: hundreds of bug fixes; new control panels for networking, printing, and display configuration; improved kpanel; new documentation; various UI tweaks, and on and on. - Gobs and gobs of work on WINE (most new apps we throw at it are now about 90% functional within a week or so). It's incredibly painful to see our intentions misperceived as they have been. We're trying to make and improve free software, and to forge relationships with the wider community. Now that our engineering team is coming back from post-shipping vacations, we're starting the process of integrating our desktop work with KDE 2.0, and improving our packaging structure to improve compatibility with potato, etc. When it comes to license issues, I'm no expert, but I can tell you that where we've had conflicts in the past we've learned from our mistakes. I don't fully understand the legal department's reasoning behind the minors clause, but I'm sure the clause wasn't put there because we have something against minors or because we *want* to deny minors the ability to use our software. The issue of whether a minor can be bound to the terms of a copyright license, and the implications within the legal jurisdictions Corel operates under are complicated ones. Looking at clause 2-b of the GPL, I can see at least one interpretation myself that would *require* the 'minors clause' to prevent the licensing of the software to a third party who would not be bound to the GPLs own redistribution requirements. Or perhaps that makes it redundant. I'm not a lawyer - I don't really know. What I do know is that it's more productive for everyone if we work on these issues as a community. Corporations are big and awkward, and by their nature can't fit into a community as easily as individuals can. But if we can work better together, I think that you'll find that we have lots more to contribute. BTW, we're working on an infrastructure for improving our ties to the wider community. It's not ready yet, but when it's up there will be a link to it at: http://linux.corel.com/products/linux_os/opensource_development.htm -Gav -- Gavriel State Engineering Architect - Linux Development Corel Corp [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- The address in the headers is not the poster's real email address. Do not send private mail to the poster using your mailer's "reply" feature. CC's of mail to mailing lists are OK. Problem reports to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". The poster's email address is "[EMAIL PROTECTED]".