On 6/9/2013 10:13 AM, Kenneth Lerman wrote: > 4 -- Do you come to it as a free and excellent body of code available > for your own use or do you see it as part of what provides their livelihood? > > 5 -- Should it be protected by strong licensing from those who might > attempt to use it without contributing back to the community? Or should > it be sown upon the earth freely for anyone to use in any fashion they > wish without the hassles of legal contracts? Ken:
I read in Steve's message an attempt to demonstrate the diversity of views of developers and users of LinuxCNC by characterizing the opposite ends of several axes (that is 'axis' plural, not to be confused with a kind of weaponry). I really like your idea of posing a questionnaire but I think turning Steve's characterizations into mutually exclusive choices is unfortunate (like the current political climate in the USA, where the only people in the middle of the road are road kill). To use point 4 as an illustration, why can't LinuxCNC be both free and excellent code and also a part of what provides someones livelihood? I don't see the choice. Similarly, in point 5, I don't see the choice between strong licensing and free use, but maybe we're using the word "strong" in different ways. It seems to me the dilemma we face isn't one of strong vs. weak licensing but one of resolving our oleo mix of licensing on various components, ranging from explicit statements of public domain to claims of copyright with no licensing statement at all. As well, there is a vague notion of assignment to a central "LinuxCNC" body pretty much across the board. This last means nothing to most of us but I suspect it means everything to certain commercial users, especially those who seek ISO 9000-series certification. Speaking of private use versus commercial use of LinuxCNC, think of successful projects which have dealt with this by creating multiple entities. In the O/S arena, for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux vs. Fedora vs. CentOS springs to mind. I'm not suggesting that we have to do something like this, only that we could if it became necessary, but not very easily if the licensing issue isn't resolved. Regards, Kent ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ How ServiceNow helps IT people transform IT departments: 1. A cloud service to automate IT design, transition and operations 2. Dashboards that offer high-level views of enterprise services 3. A single system of record for all IT processes http://p.sf.net/sfu/servicenow-d2d-j _______________________________________________ Emc-developers mailing list Emc-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers
