On Thu, 09 Aug 2012 09:03:41 -0400, Kent A. Reed wrote:
> On 8/9/2012 3:10 AM, Michael Haberler wrote:
>> Chris,
>> Am 09.08.2012 um 06:00 schrieb Chris Morley:
>> ..
>>> While a lot of the details are over my head the ideas your talking
>>> about are important.
>>> We are not so good at long time planning in linuxcnc but it has
>>> seemed to work up to this point never-the-less.
>>>
>>> I see a few things coming in the nearish future that may put us in
>>> a position of considering developing
>>> a new version.
>>> licensing is a bit of a mess right now - which limits who will
>>> use/develop use if there is legal questions of use/distribution.
>>> <...>
>>> Enjoying the discussion...
>>> Chris M
>> linking a rewrite of LinuxCNC ("LinuxCNC3") and a licensing cleanup
>> is an interesting idea, and I think worth exploring in more detail.
>>
>> I dont have a suggestion for a future license yet, but assume we had
>> one (lets call it v3license) and it would enable bringing in other key
>> components more easily.
>>
>> I need to think this through, but my first take on a greenfield
>> approach to V3 would be:
>>
>> 1. carrying forward HAL and RTAPI, all the HAL components, motion,
>> comp, the sim/rt environment to v3license would be key.
>> <...>
>>
>> whale of a plan.. this will years of coexistence of v2 and v3. But I
>> agree it is time to consider that cut.
>>
>> - Michael
>>
>
> I don't know what has happened to him in recent times but a fellow
> named
> Paul Corner (the father of the BDI series of EMC) was a major player
> early in the history of EMC being pushed out of NIST. In addition to
> making many technical contributions, he constantly complained about
> the
> licensing mess and the conundrum it would present to many users.
> Tension
> grew between him and other developers about many things and useful
> discussions gradually ceased. Clearly, the licensing problem didn't
> go
> away however.
>
> One has to be cautious about license "cleanup". I'm not a lawyer nor
> do
> I play one on TV but as I understand it, a license can be changed
> only
> by the granter of the license. I haven't looked explicitly at the
> current codebase but In some parts of the original EMC both the
> granter
> and the license were explicitly stated. In other parts, not so much.
> As
> Paul would (did) say, one can't simply slap a license on a piece of
> code
> that is missing a license statement.
>
> John Kasunich's communication came in as I was writing this. It is
> exactly the kind of communication we want/need from all the authors.
I never said it would be easy, and belive me I was NOT suggesting just
slapping something on it. No, if you cannot clean up the licenses then
you will always have this problem creeping up. That would be, in my
book, a prime reason to throw away working code to make it clear and
simple.
I'm glad that John got back to you, and there was a lot more wrong with
Paul's discussions than what you described. I would have to check my
email archives to make sure that he is in fact the same Paul that caused
me to blow a cork a decade ago and end my serious participation with
EMC.
Moving forward. If I were heading up a license cleanup effort I would
put together a list of acceptable licenses (whatever they are) and
advocate one of them but ask if that one cannot be worked out with
everyone is there another license that would be acceptable by the
authors/license holders. It is likely that some of the components
cannot be worked out, so then a clear migration strategy can be made for
finding a replacement. At that point I would also ask if LinuxCNC/EMC
can become the license holder so that they can work out these things in
the future, but would also suggest that they, as a body, be holden to a
contract that states the limits of what they can do with issues like
relicensing, etc.
Other than that, it will likely be a lot of work to swap out components
to ones that have clear license/ownership constraints.
Just my 2c...
EBo --
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