Dalibor Topic wrote:
Geir Magnusson Jr. <geir <at> pobox.com> writes:
I think that in order to really work for the "free-as-in-stallman" ;)
community, someone will have to literally fork sun's GPL-ed
implementation, as I'm guessing GPL advocates will want to be able to
contribute / augment / maintain the codebase, but not allow Sun to
re-license their contributions under commercial terms.
Sounds like a pointless idea to me, as a GPL advocate. ;)
Me too, but if you don't want to contribute under commercial terms...
BTW, I'm not advocating anyone do that.
Whether I contribute to GNU Classpath, Apache Harmony or Sun's project, the end
result can be used in proprietary runtimes anyway, and in Classpath's & Sun's
case actually is used that way. That doesn't hurt my own use of that code, or
that of my users.
Yep - this is my attitude as well. There is no loss if someone chooses
to close source something that is available open elsewhere.
If people chose to license that code under more restrictive terms, than it's
available under, than that's their right, as is mine not to make that choice. As
long as the same code remains available under a licensing choice that allows me
to use it (i.e. GPL-compatible in my GPL advocate case), I'd see no reason to
complain about it, or to refuse to contribute to it.
I'm just not sure if everyone feels that way. I've heard the standard
rhetoric about not supporting "code hoarders" and such...
geir
cheers,
dalibor topic