On Jun 23, 2009, at 5:53 PM, Zach Welch wrote:
On Tue, 2009-06-23 at 17:07 -0700, Rick Altherr wrote:But since you bring it up, sunk costs actually more relate to costs ofabandoning work that should have been profitable, because conditionschange that prevent the profit from being realized (or bigger profits becoming available through other means). Thus, my costs here will besunk if and only if I chose to depart from the community (or am exiled).I suggest you look up the economic definition of sunk cost. It has todo with a cost that is incurred with no way to recover it. Your contribution of time can never be recovered once it has been made. As such, it should not be used in decision making once the cost has beenincurred. Any contributions made by you up to this point are sunk andshould not be considered when making any future decisions.I would be deluded to believe that all of my time will be recovered directly, unless I were to create a dongle or some other device thatleverages all of those hours and made profits that paid off all of theseinvestments ten times over. I stand by my assertion that those costs will not be "sunk" unless such plans fail to come through.That said, I might be ambitious (or on the verge of delusion) to believethat such could happen, so I will concede the point -- grudgingly -- that most of my time will probably end up sunk. ;)
You seem to be missing the point. Once you've used your time to contribute, you can never get that time back. Compensation for the time doesn't change that. You can never undo your contribution and go back to where you started. This is in contrast to purchasing something. In general, you can return the purchase and receive your money back.
As you agreed, I have enough standing to take this as far as required in an attempt to enforce this interpretation, whether or not I win. Thus, my opinion needs to matter for that reason alone, because I am not simply treading water in legal waters: I think my boat floats.You certainly can, but the community can also decide to remove yourcopyrights from the project and do whatever they want. At that point,you have no legal recourse on future distributions.True. Is this where you are leaning, personally?
No, just pointing out that it is an option. You've been making many statements about how things cannot be done because you won't allow it as a copyright holder. Just be aware that being a copyright holder doesn't grant you that ability. You'd be better off discussion things rather than attempting to force an outcome via a threat.
I have offered my services repeatedly to those who need it to help resolve this situation with technical solutions.With lots of grandstanding about ensuring those solutions will also becovered by the GPL even if there is no strict reason that they must.Please explain this further, particularly the part about "even if thereis no strict reason that they must". I cannot imagine that you are suggesting violating the GPL, so this does not parse for me right now. I am willing to build GPL-compatible solutions, while others would rather try to work around the GPL. Fixing the open solution is easierthan trying to change the license, and it's cheaper than paying lawyers.I do not want to give my work under a license that lets others get the work for free, because it is fair for me to try to make a little moneyfor the effort it will take. Otherwise, what is wrong with the GPL fora reference implementation? Did you even read the part of the othere-mail where I said the door for proprietary work will be open no matterwhat license OpenOCD chooses in this capacity? And that I would be willing to dual-license said work? What is wrong about any of this?
Yes, you acknowledged the "loophole" of a clean implementation of a JTAG over TCP/IP library. That doesn't change your statements that if you choose to work on it, it will be licensed under the GPL.
Instead, I am beingasked to give up my GPL copyright claims on the work that I have done,without any compensation.No one has asked that at all. Rather, there has been requests to discuss alternatives to the few Zach sanctioned technical solutions. You don't need to participate in them, but you should recognize thatother copyright holders have the right to discuss alternatives even ifthey don't align with your wishes.By asking to add an exception to the license, that is exactly what is happening here, unless you would like to remove my changes -- as youhave repeated pointed out is possible. Your repetition of this gives meconcern that you would consider such an option as appealing.
You seem to be confusing discussion with resolution. There has been discussion of an exception to the license, not a resolution to do so. Therefore, no one has asked you to give up any copyright claims. In fact, a change of licensing wouldn't constitute giving up those claims either.
Are you kidding me? Under what obligation amI required to help others that project from violating the GPL license?None and no one has asked you to. There has been no clear resolution either way. You have expressed your dissent. Should the community decide to do a 0.2.0 release in such a way that violates the GPL and contains your copyrighted code, you have the ability to assert your rights via the legal system.I have been cajoled and ridiculed for taking my present stance. I havebeen seeing a wide range of pressures from users and contributors to give the community an exception for this library. I reject yourassertion that no one has asked me; I claim that every new request asksthe same question of me anew. I am very sensitive to the needs of the community, regardless of what you may want to say to the contrary.
There has been lots of discussion about the spectrum of options available to the community. Those are not mandates. Those are not requests for immediate action. They are discussion to determine the proper resolution. Take a step back and look at the discussions. Nowhere has anyone asked or requested that anyone else give up their claims to copyright or to change the license. There is just the presentation of possible solutions for evaluation by the community.
However, I would be screwing a much bigger community than OpenOCD if I were to allow an exception to the GPL. I would be undermining the broader free software community. I can't live with that. Can you? When there are now abundance of compliant technical solutions?
There are other prominent open-source projects that have provided exceptions to the GPL such as GCC. That didn't undermine the larger free software community. We should also be clear that you are referring to the free software community that supports the GPL. There are plenty of other free software communities that prefer other licenses that are in many ways more free for both developers and users. Would an exception for FTDI upset Stallman? Probably. Would it undermine the communities that support the BSD license or enter directly into the public domain? Not a bit. Personally I find the GPL to be too far reaching and limiting to the developers and the users. I'm not going to elaborate since that is far from the point of this discussion.
I do respect that OpenOCD is currently licensed under the pure GPL. I also acknowledge that this makes linkage to the D2XX library problematic for distribution. The community (or at least the copyright holders) need to come to a consensus on how to resolve this and implement it. Until that happens, discussion on possible ways to resolve it are completely appropriate for this list. I'm firmly against any individuals attempting to limit that discussion on the basis that they don't agree with certain options. Just because GPL- compliant options have been suggested does _not_ mean that the community is limited to choosing from them.
I said in another thread that I now see this as a "blocker" for 0.2.0.OpenOCD needs to provide a GPL-compliant solution for these users beforeanyone produces more binary releases from the trunk w/ FTD2XX. Each individual distributor can decide for themselves whether or not I have the passion and ability to pursue violators to seek such compliance.
Technically, nothing is required from the project-side. The infringement happens solely at the time of distribution, not at the time of authoring or compilation. Since OpenOCD is only released as source code, the project is not directly affected by any infringement. Doing nothing still leaves packagers and distributors open to the possibility of committing infringement rather easily, but that is still a choice made by them, not us. D2xx is by default disabled. _If_ we choose to do anything for 0.2.0, it could be as simple as adding a warning that by having D2xx enabled, the resulting binaries cannot be distributed.
Cheers, Zach
-- Rick Altherr kc8...@kc8apf.net"He said he hadn't had a byte in three days. I had a short, so I split it with him."
-- Unsigned
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