On Thu, 09 Aug 2012 10:41:45 -0400, Kenneth Lerman wrote:
> On 8/9/2012 9:47 AM, EBo wrote:
>> 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 --
>>
> Fortunately, the git (and previous) change logs can give us a list of
> the contributors. As one step along the way of getting things done, I
> suggest that we ask contributors to sign something like:
>
> I, (insert name here), do hereby authorize the Board of Directors of
> the
> LinuxCNC project (formerly the EMC project) to define a new license
> to
> be used for all of my past contributions to that project. In
> consideration of the work they provide to define such a license, I
> agree
> to sign any and all documents that are necessary to facilitate the
> change of my contributions to use that license.
>
> I suggest that we come up with an agreement of what our license
> requirements are and start getting people to sign up.
>
> I believe that if we can, we should use some pre-existing license,
> rather that writing our own. Among my requirements:
>
> 1 -- It should prevent people from hi-jacking our code and creating a
> closed source product from it.
> 2 -- It should facilitate the development of open source products.
> 3 -- It should facilitate the work of system integrators.
> 4 -- It should permit the development of closed source modules that
> work
> with it. (I'm not sure we would all agree with this.) For example,
> suppose I develop a really clever way of generating optimal paths for
> clearing a pocket. I'd like to be able to sell this as an add on to
> linuxCNC3 without distributing the source.
I absolutly agree, but there is an issue that I personally would have
to think thrice over -- that is are there any limits on the board
changing the license? I also agree that we should try to use an
existing license (like GPL/LGPL, BSD, MIT, Public Domain). The question
is what are the range of acceptable licenses to choose from. Some
(much?) of the work is GPLv2+ and there is an issue of GPLv3 libraries
that people want to use. Personally I like (L)GPL code so that I can
continue working with it in the future...
EBo --
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