On Sunday, 08 May 2005, at 02:08:01 (+0900), Carsten Haitzler wrote: > well you could make them GPL - but mej can just not accept the > patches as they would taint eterm's existing license making it > gpl. bsd guarantees that THAT code stays open - but if people can > steal it - if i want to "steal" that code and put it into some > closed proprietary project - you would never know. it can be > reformatted, and at the end of the day its an algorithm. there are > only so many ways you can write a fast routine to do a fairly narrow > scoped task. if that was the case someone would have claimed > copyright infringement on for (i = 0; i < n; i++) a long time ago :)
Couldn't have said it better myself...except I'd have capitalized it properly. ;-) > anyway - i can understand what you mean - but even if it were gpl > you couldn't practically find instances of it in closed code :(. you > will know your code will be public and free in eterm's code and > available and able to be re-used with very few restrictions, but not > more limitations than that. > > basically if someone submits patches to code - they are implicitly > agreeing to the existing copyright license unless they ask for a > change or re-license their patches and code. if they are licensed > differently the chances of them being used drop dramatically to > somewhere about 0 :( Or, put another way, our philosophy for some time now has been, "We don't give a rat's ass what you do with our code as long as you give credit where it's due." We are very careful to credit contributors appropriately, and we expect to be appropriately credited in return. I am already aware of proprietary products that earn profit and use Eterm as an integral part of their offering. Big freakin' deal. Now if they ask me to do custom work for them, I tend to ask for payment in return; it's only fair. But it doesn't bother me. I have experienced significant amounts of frustration over not being able to use others' GPL'd code. I should be free to use the license I choose for my software, and I should be free to use others' "free" code as well. But the GPL takes away my freedom in that regard. The BSD license is far more free (libre) than the GPL is because the GPL is a political tool more than anything. On Saturday, 07 May 2005, at 13:54:22 (-0600), Tres Melton wrote: > But If the E developers import your code into a BSD project then > won't it become BSD? Otherwise that seems like a good plan. That would be for a court to determine, and as far as I know, that particular phenomenon hasn't been tested yet. > I take your point about code theft. It is a good one but there are > exceptions to that. What's that guy's name in Germany that runs > gpl-violations.org, Harald Welte? He also wrote most of the IP > tables code. He has gotten a number of companies to comply with the > GPL and post their code. Every once in awhile hell does freeze > over. :-/ Last I knew, Rusty Russell wrote most of the iptables code. Harald Welte only wrote a few targets. iptables' code is large enough and complex enough that some of its behaviors are unique and readily identifiable. This is the exception, not the rule. Small pieces of code can be stolen with neither a trace nor a hope for discovery. Heck, I've even had my code "stolen" (i.e., used verbatim with no credit given) by GPL'd and LGPL'd software projects! If I can't stop them from being assrabbits, what makes me think I can stop Sun or Microsoft? > As I stated, Eterm is Mej's baby and he can have my modifications > anyway that he wants them. That doesn't mean that I can't hope for > a license change to the GPL though. If I felt Eterm was better licensed under the GPL than the BSD license, I'd be using the GPL. But thus far no one has been able to convince me that any license is better for Eterm than the BSD, including RMS himself. Though you're welcome to try. :-) > I still wish there was someway to guarantee that my work wouldn't > end up in the hands of a morally impaired company without at least > getting a paycheck. I might be old fashioned but I like to get > kissed before I get screwed. Unfortunately, the GPL isn't it either. As I said, it can work for large projects whose identifying characteristics are externally testable. TCP/IP stacks are a great example, as are things like Samba and the Linux kernel. But to be blunt, that ain't us, and we ain't them. :) On Saturday, 07 May 2005, at 09:14:46 (-0600), Tres Melton wrote: > This is kinda important to me as well. I am finishing up a SSE2 > port of Eterm's shading routines and wanted to use the GPL license > for them. I didn't even realize that E/Eterm uses the BSD license. > I would prefer the code stay open with the GPL but if MeJ insists > then I suppose the BSD license will have to do. It's his baby after > all. I just like things to go fast! ;-) I'd certainly hate to turn away patches due to license disagreements, but someone would have to do some pretty serious convincing to get me to change Eterm's license (or LibAST's, or Mezzanine's...all use the same license). Personally, I really get sick of how much politics interferes with community software development (can you say "BitKeeper?" I knew you could...), so the last thing I want to do is be guilty of that myself. But given the choice between refusing a patch or restricting the freedoms of fellow developers (like raster!), I'll refuse the patch. That's how strongly *I* feel about freedom. Michael -- Michael Jennings (a.k.a. KainX) http://www.kainx.org/ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> n + 1, Inc., http://www.nplus1.net/ Author, Eterm (www.eterm.org) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "Perhaps someday we will discover that space and time are simpler than the human equation." -- Jean-Luc Picard, ST:TNG ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: NEC IT Guy Games. Get your fingers limbered up and give it your best shot. 4 great events, 4 opportunities to win big! Highest score wins.NEC IT Guy Games. Play to win an NEC 61 plasma display. Visit http://www.necitguy.com/?r=20 _______________________________________________ enlightenment-devel mailing list enlightenment-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/enlightenment-devel
