-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Siegbert Baude wrote: > Pascal Bleser schrieb: >> The only form of "giving away" I know of is putting source code under >> "public domain". The problem is, it's not a license, and "public domain" >> does not exist as a license/legal state in every country. Most notably, >> the concept of "public domain" does not exist for source code in >> Germany, AFAICR. > > You're right with regard to Germany. Beyond it, you can't give away your > rights as "Urheber" (author in a legal sense). So what the GNU project
Right, that's an "issue" as well. > demands from their authors (moving over the author's rights to the GNU > project), to be able to defend the GPL without having to ask every > single developper is just not valid in Germany and at least some other > European countries. I heard that there are attempts to adopt to > different underlying legal systems better. Note that in most (if not all) OSS projects, the project as a whole doesn't hold the ownership anyway. You're not giving away your ownership of the code you write when you submit it as part of an OSS project. As an example, if JBoss wanted to change their license from LGPL to ASL (Apache Software License, similar to MPL/MIT, somewhat a BSD-revised kind of license), the project or lead developers can't just say "ok, we change the license". They would have to ask every single developer who committed code in any form if they agree to change the license of their parts. BTW, if they don't, they would of course still have the option of removing and rewriting the parts that come from developers who don't accept the license change. The only exception that comes to my mind would be Sun's CDDL, that is not very clear about that. It seems to imply that you give away your ownership to the project, but I haven't read the license myself, so I'm not 100% sure about it. >> Now, that's fine and all, I mean, U&W can put their software under >> whatever license they prefer. I'm not criticising U&W by any means >> (well, maybe: if they just want to make pine opensource, they'd better >> put it under one of OSI's approved licenses and be done with it, why >> have yet another license...), > > Is there an OSI compatible license which prohibits forks? IMO not, but > nevertheless somebody could like to prevent a damage to the reputation > of his work by forks with bad changes. Mmmm... I don't know, never looked at it from that perspective. Well, yeah, a fork could cause damage in terms of reputation but... not sure. I mean, it's a fork, it's not the project itself ;) >> The point is (again, I think I'm writing this for the 4th time or so): >> when we say the 5 first CDs are "100% OSS", do we mean OSS as by OSI's >> definition, or do we have our own definition of "OSS", like: "if we have >> the source code and can redistribute it, then it's OSS" ? >> >> When I say "we", it's actually Novell/SUSE, as there doesn't seem to be >> much influence we can take on this decision (or everyone is too busy to >> comment) :\ > > Maybe you missed the mail of Juergen Weigert > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>? He answered, that SUSE will stick with > the OSI definition for CD6 at the moment. I read Jürgen's mail, but I heard the opposite from other people working at SUSE. Maybe it needs to be clarified inside Novell/SUSE first ;) >> PS: reading my mail again, I do sound so picky... it's not my intention, >> I just wanted to clarify a few things, as opensource and free software >> are often misunderstood, it's really more FYI than "cutting hairs in 4" >> (and IANAL, I'm far from being an expert in that area) > > I really appreciate your efforts, you're mails are always well thought > and balanced. Thanks. And (wrt the 2 other mails you've just posted on the list) please don't imply that because we're talking about licenses, some of us "don't care about usability" or that we're becoming "GPL extremists like Debian" (*). I wrote in a previous mail that my original subject line to "drop pine" was mistaken, and again, I'd like to apoligize for it. Yet, it's not because SUSE Linux is a distribution that is not adhering to FSF zealotry that we can't talk about licenses and have a 100% OSS subset of the distribution. Also, just because my opinion (as well as of a few other people) is to consider pine not to be opensource, it doesn't reflect the distribution. I'm not working for Novell/SUSE, I'm just part of the community ;) So, please, also don't imply that because we're discussing that matter here, SUSE Linux would be "heading towards Debian" (*) or something like that. (*) I really don't want to bash the Debian folks for that, it's also good to have people who care about it in such a way - whether it matches your "philosophy" or not, that's a matter of choice. Personally, I respect them very much for the work they do, and as their role as some safeguard wrt Free Software. Nevertheless, I do have a somewhat more pragmatic approach, and I just like SUSE Linux better as a distribution. But that's not a reason for bashing them or being disrespectful by any means ;) cheers - -- -o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/ /\\ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _\_v The more things change, the more they stay insane. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFEJzD/r3NMWliFcXcRAqczAJ90RarV36vqSTBSMKNXvraLFHeK+wCfWXJj gvOy7ibNrkVBrBgFn6Qtyzk= =fLT4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
