Hi Allen,
i don't know who you are neither do i know what your contributions to
OpenOffice.org are. Probably you would say that you never have thought
about any contribution because of the JCA and of course it's your
personal right. But on the other hand we don't know what we have missed
by your potential contributions ...
Anyway it seems that you don't have read all the blogs, comments etc.
carefully. And that you again use the example of Kohei to blame against
Sun and i would say not only Sun but against the whole project. The
project has rules at the moment, like it or not but they exists and they
were known to everyone. Even Kohei knew them and have accepted them in
the past. The whole story around the solver isn't really motivating
because a sad story is misused to talk about something else. I won't
repeat all the comments around this story because i know that you all
know them and that you all have your own personal opinion of it.
There is no Sun PR compaign, there are simply comments from people
inside Sun to correct or better to provide a second view to the whole
story. Believe me a lot of my colleagues are in the same way frustrated
of the whole story as me. Because we feel as part of the community and
not as the "bad aliens" from Sun. We got paid from Sun to work on a
great project and if you blame Sun you blame in the same way a huge
group of effective code contributing developers.
A lot of people like to work on the project and that is great and i like
to work with everyone and will support everyone. Well i have my
"bad days" as well and wasn't probably really helpful at these days ;-)
and probably won't be in the future on such days. But that is me an
individual contributor (paid by Sun) and not Sun at all.
My personal opinion of this is that one company has chosen a really bad
style to address a specific topic. I don't know why, maybe because they
couldn't argue with huge contributions.
On the other hand and that is completely independent of this story i saw
with the growing success of OpenOffice.org that more and more parasites
came up and want to benefit from this success. They talk a lot but they
do nothing with or without JCA.
Anyway please don't blame Sun for the last comment but only me because
it is my own opinion.
Juergen
Allen Pulsifer wrote:
Hello Mathias,
There is a lot of PR in this issue floating around the internet these days,
most of it coming from Sun. Its clear to me that the goal of this PR is to
maintain the status quo, i.e., ensure that contributions to the project keep
coming in, and that the contributors sign the JCA or its successor the SCA
that assign copyrights to Sun.
I think both Sun and the project are poorly served by both the JCA/SCA and
the current PR campaign.
For starters, I think the JCA/SCA discourages contributions. I myself would
not sign the JCA/SCA assigning copyright for anything but the most trivial
code, and as we have seen, neither will Kohei and I'm sure neither will many
other developers. Sun can try to spin it a different way or try to "sell
us" on the JCA/SCA, but for many developers, you are not going to succeed.
I have carefully read all of the rationale for the JCA/SCA, including the
most recent blog post from Simon Phipps at
http://blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/sca_r_office. In my opinion, none of
these rational hold water. The same things could be accomplished by asking
contributors to assign joint copyright to a non-profit foundation rather
than to Sun.
The one rational Simon offers that is a little bit different than the usual
is the following:
"In many cases (including some very well-known open source projects) [the
JCA] also allows the original donor to offer commercial offerings, thus
ensuring the project continues to have engagement funded by its major
participants."
I myself to not begrudge Sun its efforts to maintain a commercial version of
OOo. Again however, the same thing could be accomplished with code that is
under the LGPL. In other words, a Foundation chartered to maintain the
copyrights in OOo could insist that all contributions included in the
official OOo build be licensed under the LGPL, and this would be sufficient
to allow Sun to continue producing and distributing StarOffice.
The alternatives I see here are just what I mentioned in my prior post. If
Sun continues to insist that all copyrights be assigned to it, then
alternative methods of contributing will be created. These alternative
methods might include alternate distributions or forks that accept pure LGPL
code, or possibly even GPL code or code under other licenses. This I think
is inevitable.
In my opinion, the best course of action for Sun is to set up a Foundation
to hold joint copyrights from contributors. That at least gives Sun a
chance to negotiate for all contributions to be licensed under the LGPL. If
Sun does not do that, you might find some future contributions are offered
only under the GPL, and Sun would not be able to use these in StarOffice.
The much better arrangement for Sun, I think, is to try to keep all
contributions under the LGPL. I offer this suggestion as something to think
about.
In the meantime, I would like to make one comment. Kohei is the author of
the "solver" code and owns the copyright. He has the absolute legal and
moral right to determine the terms of his contribution. He has extremely
generously offered this code to the world under the LGPL. The LGPL is a
fine open source license. It allows virtually unrestricted use of the code,
for free, while guaranteeing that any derivatives also remain free. It
embodies some of the best aspects of the open source movement. I find it
very admirable and commendable that Kohei has so generously offered to make
his code available under the LGPL, and I find nothing to criticize in this
decision.
Recently however I have read some rather disturbing comments on the internet
that Kohei is somehow a "bad person" for offering his code under the LGPL,
and furthermore, the only way for him to become a "good person" is to sign a
legal document that assigns copyright to Sun Microsystems. This I believe
is unprecedented in the open source movement. Is that what we have come to,
that a person who offers code under the LGPL is subject to criticism? That
if he refuses to sign over his copyright to a proprietary product then he is
somehow a "bad person". I am quite frankly, amazed, stupefied,
flabbergasted--at a total loss for words--by the recent comments I have
read.
In the part of the world where I come from, it is very common for code to be
offered under dual licenses. An open source license such as the GPL is
offered for free, and a standard commercial license is offered for a fee to
companies who want to use the code in a closed-source commercial product.
Companies that want to use the code under the commercial license simply pay
the fee, and then they have that right.
Specifically with respect to Kohei's solver code, Sun has stated that it
will have to be completely rewritten by someone else, with copyright held by
Sun, in order to be included in OpenOffice.org. Taking that statement at
face value, it appears then that Sun is willing to spend $50,000 plus in
engineering time just to have a solver that it holds the copyright for, as
opposed to a solver that it is allowed to use under the LGPL. If in fact
Sun believes that holding the copyright to this code is worth $50,000+, then
I suggest you simply offer this to Kohei. AFAIK, he has not in any way
asked for this or suggested it, but where I come from, that is considered
fair.
On the other hand, what is not considered "fair" is for anyone to try to
berate or intimidate a person into signing over his copyrights. This type
of discourse is not a pretty sight and I do not think it will be viewed
positively by most open source developers.
In the meantime, I again commend Kohei for very generously offering his code
under the LGPL, and even if Sun will not include it in the official OOo
distribution, I hope it is made available either as part of another
distribution, or as part of a separate download, i.e., an add-on.
Again, I hope that Sun will spend some time thinking about the above
suggestions. I think this would benefit both Sun and the project in the
long term.
Thank you,
Allen
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