Re: [Openocd-development] License

[Rick Altherr]

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 of

abandoning work that should have been profitable, because conditions

sunk if and only if I chose to depart from the community (or am
exiled).

change that prevent the profit from being realized (or bigger profits becoming available through other means). Thus, my costs here will be

do 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 been

should not be considered when making any future decisions.

I suggest you look up the economic definition of sunk cost. It has to incurred. Any contributions made by you up to this point are sunk and

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 that

investments ten times over.  I stand by my assertion that those costs
will not be "sunk" unless such plans fail to come through.


that such could happen, so I will concede the point -- grudgingly --
that most of my time will probably end up sunk. ;)

leverages all of those hours and made profits that paid off all of these That said, I might be ambitious (or on the verge of delusion) to believe

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 your

you have no legal recourse on future distributions.

copyrights from the project and do whatever they want. At that point,

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.

covered by the GPL even if there is no strict reason that they must.

With lots of grandstanding about ensuring those solutions will also be

is 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 easier


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 money

a reference implementation?  Did you even read the part of the other

what license OpenOCD chooses in this capacity?  And that I would be
willing to dual-license said work?  What is wrong about any of this?

Please explain this further, particularly the part about "even if there than trying to change the license, and it's cheaper than paying lawyers. for the effort it will take. Otherwise, what is wrong with the GPL for e-mail where I said the door for proprietary work will be open no matter

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 being

without any compensation.

asked to give up my GPL copyright claims on the work that I have done,

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 that

they don't align with your wishes.

other copyright holders have the right to discuss alternatives even if

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 you

concern that you would consider such an option as appealing.

have repeated pointed out is possible. Your repetition of this gives me

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 am

I 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.

been seeing a wide range of pressures from users and contributors to
give the community an exception for this library.  I reject your

the 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.

I have been cajoled and ridiculed for taking my present stance. I have assertion that no one has asked me; I claim that every new request asks

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.

anyone 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.

OpenOCD needs to provide a GPL-compliant solution for these users before

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


 -- Unsigned

"He said he hadn't had a byte in three days. I had a short, so I split it with him."

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