RE: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
> On Fri, 2008-02-08 at 17:51 +0100, Juergen Schmidt wrote: > > The project simply don't need people like you who has > probably never > > contributed one line of code but are very good in this kind > of useless > > discussion. I must of missed this email (I did notice Michael's reply), but really, I don't care if you like me or not, and I don't care whether you personally consider this discussion to be useless or not. First of all, many people make many contributions other than code. This includes bug reports, documentation, marketing and community support. I won't bother to list all the possible avenues for contribution because if you are so myopic as to make a statement like that I will not waste my time. In addition, as I very clearly stated, any contribution I could make has been refused by the project. As soon as the licensing issues are worked out, and the project is willing to accept code licensed only under the LGPL, then I would be willing to make contributions. I will not be signing the JCA, or SCA or whatever the name du-jour happens to be. I'm sure I'm not the only developer who feels this way. Allen - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hi On 2008-02-09, at 01:12 , sophie wrote: Hi all, I answer here but this is not an answer to Michael's mail and this is why I top post. Please all, there is no need for more provocations. The world is not perfect, but it can be worse and it has been in the past. May I remember you that we didn't have the JCA at the beginning of the project, we didn't have the PDL, we didn't have a lot of tools that make our world much better now. We are now thinking about SCA, an adapted one to our community, so no need to quarrel about what is already behind. If you really have this energy to argue, please come and discuss how we can reenforce our workflow, our communication flow, our visibility and add more power to our community. This discussion about JCA has years, may be we should discuss why we don't have a beamer any more, or why we call ourself OOo, just to move to known sterile topics (even if they may be interesting and have to be worked out). If you disagree with what is done and how it works here, express yourself yes, but make it with confidence in this community where we are all *actors*. There is no good and no evil, but a group formed with corps, companies, individuals, all with very different interests being economic or egotist or social or moral, whatever. But we are all here for OOo, the product and the community, because we believe in them. What I know by myself is that this project and its members have done a lot of moves since its beginning. It has not been easy. We sometime have had to discuss a lot and proof our concepts, it has been exhausting and it is still so because we want all for today if not yesterday. But confidence is a key word in all these discussions to make them come to real facts. So please, really, stop this fight, and allow us to think at something that is reflecting our common love for OOo. Thanks in advance Kind regards Sophie +1 Thanks, Sophie. Louis - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
All, Time out. This flame war is not really a discussion any longer on Butler Office. It's become a free for all with fire. We all have better things to do. So: enough blather. No more waste of time. This thread is cut. Louis On 2008-02-09, at 24:01 , Michael Meeks wrote: On Fri, 2008-02-08 at 17:51 +0100, Juergen Schmidt wrote: The project simply don't need people like you who has probably never contributed one line of code but are very good in this kind of useless discussion. Grief it's a dangerous precedent to start suggesting that people who contribute code might have more weight than other people ! pretty soon this leads to the madness of true meritocracy with sane governance by contributors; worse - people might notice you sound like me ;-) Interestingly, a couple of other non coders managed to express far more vigorous opinions without such a slap-down; why Allen ? :-) ATB, Michael. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hi all, I answer here but this is not an answer to Michael's mail and this is why I top post. Please all, there is no need for more provocations. The world is not perfect, but it can be worse and it has been in the past. May I remember you that we didn't have the JCA at the beginning of the project, we didn't have the PDL, we didn't have a lot of tools that make our world much better now. We are now thinking about SCA, an adapted one to our community, so no need to quarrel about what is already behind. If you really have this energy to argue, please come and discuss how we can reenforce our workflow, our communication flow, our visibility and add more power to our community. This discussion about JCA has years, may be we should discuss why we don't have a beamer any more, or why we call ourself OOo, just to move to known sterile topics (even if they may be interesting and have to be worked out). If you disagree with what is done and how it works here, express yourself yes, but make it with confidence in this community where we are all *actors*. There is no good and no evil, but a group formed with corps, companies, individuals, all with very different interests being economic or egotist or social or moral, whatever. But we are all here for OOo, the product and the community, because we believe in them. What I know by myself is that this project and its members have done a lot of moves since its beginning. It has not been easy. We sometime have had to discuss a lot and proof our concepts, it has been exhausting and it is still so because we want all for today if not yesterday. But confidence is a key word in all these discussions to make them come to real facts. So please, really, stop this fight, and allow us to think at something that is reflecting our common love for OOo. Thanks in advance Kind regards Sophie Michael Meeks wrote: [...] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
On Fri, 2008-02-08 at 17:51 +0100, Juergen Schmidt wrote: > The project simply don't need people like you who has probably never > contributed one line of code but are very good in this kind of useless > discussion. Grief it's a dangerous precedent to start suggesting that people who contribute code might have more weight than other people ! pretty soon this leads to the madness of true meritocracy with sane governance by contributors; worse - people might notice you sound like me ;-) Interestingly, a couple of other non coders managed to express far more vigorous opinions without such a slap-down; why Allen ? :-) ATB, Michael. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Allen Pulsifer wrote: All people who don't like it as it is are free to leave the project and should spare us with this kind of discussion as long as the situation doesn't change. This attitude is very telling. Some people might think that the whole reason Sun set up OpenOffice.org is to get free development and code contributions to its StarOffice product. By posting things like this, you make it very clear that it is your goal and Sun's goal that all people who will not assign copyright in their work to Sun should leave the project, because you and Sun have no use for them. If this was not obvious before, it certainly is now. sorry but that is completely nonsense but it shows that you have understand nothing. But who wonders you are not really deep involved in the project and you don't know the reality. The project simply don't need people like you who has probably never contributed one line of code but are very good in this kind of useless discussion. Good bye Allen Juergen PS: that was my last comment on this thread - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
> >> All people who don't like it as it is are free to leave > the project > >> and should spare us with this kind of discussion as long as the > >> situation doesn't change. This attitude is very telling. Some people might think that the whole reason Sun set up OpenOffice.org is to get free development and code contributions to its StarOffice product. By posting things like this, you make it very clear that it is your goal and Sun's goal that all people who will not assign copyright in their work to Sun should leave the project, because you and Sun have no use for them. If this was not obvious before, it certainly is now. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
> I see that Allen wants to continue in developing the project and > product, so please everyone lets Allen do it... That would be great. As soon as the project is ready to accept LGPL contributions, then we can make that happen. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Jan Holesovsky wrote: Hi Juergen, I really did not want to step into this thread, but: On Thursday 07 February 2008 23:22, Juergen Schmidt wrote: All people who don't like it as it is are free to leave the project and should spare us with this kind of discussion as long as the situation doesn't change. Sorry, but this is a really dangerous attitude. Please don't feel offended, but it very much reminds me what we used to have in our country in the communist era. "You don't like it here? Emigrate. And don't be surprised if you get shot during that." well, think about my exaggerated comment and i am sure you know how it was meant. I guess we all are here because we love OpenOffice.org. And each of us has his/her reasons for that. So what's wrong with having his/her (different) opinion about how it should be handled as a project? i am not against an open and constructive discussion but not again and again when the base facts are still the same and haven't changed. It's simply useless and it is interesting that it always comes from the same people. Probably there is a reason for doing it again and again that i don't know or don't see. Anyway for me it's simply stupid. Juergen - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Sorry, but this is a really dangerous attitude. Please don't feel offended, but it very much reminds me what we used to have in our country in the communist era. "You don't like it here? Emigrate. And don't be surprised if you get shot during that." Please emigrate to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] or ..., not outside of our country ^H^H^Hproject. Got it? -- Pavel Janík - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hi Mathias, On Thu, 2008-02-07 at 16:05 +0100, Mathias Bauer wrote: > I don't want to kill the thread - I'm not even empowered to do that. :-) Good 'oh :-) personally I think the discussion is helpful. Jurgen is right, of course, that we discussed this 3 months ago, and that there has been no progress in between. That itself is worth noticing - despite the perception of activity & improvement created by Advisory Boards and so on. Anyhow, if we can discuss there are a few other bits worth clearing up as well: On Wed, 2008-02-06 at 23:54 +0100, Mathias Bauer wrote: > Michael Meeks wrote: > > Haha :-) I once tried using OpenOffice too, it's user-interface > > was perfection: no changes welcome. > OK, I was just pulling your leg. Sorry for that. Of course, no need to apologise, it was amusing, good to inject some humour :-) > > Of course you can :-) I spent some time explaining that the vast > > majority of that code is CA free (I call that eclectic ownership). > > How much code is CA free doesn't make a difference - This is partially true - but re-applying this back to the interesting case: OO.o - what then is the problem with having CA free plugins included in the product ? :-) > - it doesn't change the fact that only Novell is able to licence the > whole stuff under proprietary conditions. With regard to our current > discussion this is the identical situation as in case of OOo. Not really; lets summarise the differences: the vast majority of the Mono code is eclectic ownership, there is a small (and shrinking) core that is not. Furthermore, there are replacements for the 'core' piece as I understand it: eg. 'Portable.Net' implements their own core, and shares the run-time libraries, or you could use an IKVM type technique to run .Net apps on a JVM (I imagine), and at worst there is the non-free MS runtime. Were Novell to do something truly stupid & unreasonable with the core Mono licensing tomorrow, demanding cash / concessions / whatever to ship / use it - there are lots of other options. Now consider OO.o - Sun owns everything, and insists on owning and controlling everything, even cleanly separated components [ included in the product ] (despite as you say) it not really making an immediate difference to Sun's licensing stranglehold. Obviously this leaves a very different situation if Sun decides to do something stupid tomorrow. IMHO, representation should follow contribution, the more you contribute - the more say & ownership you should have: that seems only fair. Unfortunately, this is not true of OO.o - and I was hoping for some movement here - AB wise. A trivial and incremental way to achieve this, without hurting Sun's licensing business (in the 1st instance), is (as I outline) - allowing non-Sun-owned components into OO.o, under some suitable license of Sun's choosing etc. It seems fair and extremely reasonable. It is the sheer reasonable-ness of the proposal, combined with it's (apparent) unequivocal rejection by Sun that concerns me most. > If a company gave me the opportunity to get some useful open source > software and adjust it to my needs I would gladly accept that > wonderful opportunity and contribute my code back. That would be my > "thank you" for the huge amount of work that the company already had > invested and that gives me a benefit. I know the argument, I used to try to persuade people of this view :-) clearly however gratitude has its limits. It cuts both ways: Novell, and others have contributed substantially to OO.o, yet (apparently) Sun is unwilling to accept a wonderful opportunity to contribute their changes to our code back to (not even Novell of course, but some open & transparent foundation). ie. why should the "thank-yous" appear to only go one-way ? > Insinuating a participation of Sun in the case of "Butler office" really > is ridiculous. *That* is the stupid part of the thread I would like to > see stopped. Fine :-) it would be silly anyway, now we know it's not so. > The rest might still be boring, as it presents the same > arguments we heard days, weeks or months ago (and probably we will > also hear days, weeks and months later), but that's life. Heh :-) glad you can cope. > And as you are doing your own builds anyway where you can include > extensions easily - why bother? Well - ultimately, I would like to aim at working within the OpenOffice.org project, and reducing the differences between our builds to a minimum [ and of course, trying to ensure OO.o & our users have the latest & greatest components / features we work on in their download ]. But as you know, the main problem is that non-inclusion of components, appears to lead to duplication in the core. HTH, Michael. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot - T
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hi Juergen, I really did not want to step into this thread, but: On Thursday 07 February 2008 23:22, Juergen Schmidt wrote: > All people who don't like it as it is are free to leave the project and > should spare us with this kind of discussion as long as the situation > doesn't change. Sorry, but this is a really dangerous attitude. Please don't feel offended, but it very much reminds me what we used to have in our country in the communist era. "You don't like it here? Emigrate. And don't be surprised if you get shot during that." I guess we all are here because we love OpenOffice.org. And each of us has his/her reasons for that. So what's wrong with having his/her (different) opinion about how it should be handled as a project? Regards, Jan - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
On 7.2.2008, at 23:47, Allen Pulsifer wrote: i am speaking as a community member and not as Sun employee ;-) Three month ago or so we had more or less the same discussion. I thought the current situation was clarified and no further discussion is necessary until Sun brings it up or if Sun would misuse the copyright. Thank you for that clarification, Juergen.Schmidt of Sun.com I also thank Juergen for the clarification. And (unlike you) understand how he meant it. And I agree with him. I see that Allen wants to continue in developing the project and product, so please everyone lets Allen do it... -- Pavel Janík - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Allen Pulsifer wrote (7-2-2008 22:48) the means you are using to change the situation (flooding dev@ list with offtopic) are wrong. There is nothing off-topic about this discussion. It is highly relevant to every developer who is not also an employee of Sun Microsystems. Hmm, I always thought it is in the interest of every community member that the project flourishes, is well guided. If Novell wants more influence, there may be good reasons for it. If things for OpenOffice.org continue to evolve like they do the last years, it might be very good for the project, that there comes a change in leadership. But I am not in a position to judge. And only reading 'arguments' in favour of changes, won't help me nor anyone else. Even more so, because the arguments I saw, often were build upon suspension, nitpicking, turning around. Changes, I expect, are most likely to grow on a sort of trust and understanding. Decisions on this route will not come from this list, and the discussion we saw here, is not likely to stimulate it. So yes: wrong words, wrong place. Regards, Cor -- "The Year of 3" -2008- "Het jaar van 3" Cor Nouws Arnhem - Netherlands - nl.OpenOffice.org - marketing contact - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
> i am speaking as a community member and not as Sun employee ;-) > Three month ago or so we had more or less the same > discussion. I thought > the current situation was clarified and no further discussion is > necessary until Sun brings it up or if Sun would misuse the copyright. Thank you for that clarification, Juergen.Schmidt of Sun.com If I or anyone else wants to discuss this topic, we will, regardless of your opinion Not-As-A-Sun-Employee. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hi, i am speaking as a community member and not as Sun employee ;-) Three month ago or so we had more or less the same discussion. I thought the current situation was clarified and no further discussion is necessary until Sun brings it up or if Sun would misuse the copyright. The Butler office issue is addressed and the lawyers are working on it. Martin will be so kind to keep us updated ... This thread brings no new infos to the topic and i think we are all aware of the facts. The thread is only boring and useless ... All people who don't like it as it is are free to leave the project and should spare us with this kind of discussion as long as the situation doesn't change. Juergen Allen Pulsifer wrote: The intent is not to mislead, but present the reality. I would argue that talk of "Joint", and "Shared" in copyright assignments (by contrast) is to market the unpleasant fact with meaningless friendly sounding terms :-) ie. the plain truth is perhaps not quite as obvious as you suggest. I would agree with that statement. "Joint Copyright" is just for show. In practice, a contributor would have the right to use the code under the LGPL anyway, and if the code is derived from OOo, would have no rights to distribute the code except on the LGPL. The only right added by the "Joint Copyright" is the right to sue for copyright violation, which is again, not a right that will probably ever be put into practice. In summary, the "Joint Copyright" does not add any useful rights that the contributor would not otherwise have, and is therefore just for show. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
> The intent is not to mislead, but present the reality. > I would argue that talk of "Joint", and "Shared" in copyright > assignments (by > contrast) is to market the unpleasant fact with meaningless > friendly sounding terms :-) ie. the plain truth is perhaps > not quite as obvious as you suggest. I would agree with that statement. "Joint Copyright" is just for show. In practice, a contributor would have the right to use the code under the LGPL anyway, and if the code is derived from OOo, would have no rights to distribute the code except on the LGPL. The only right added by the "Joint Copyright" is the right to sue for copyright violation, which is again, not a right that will probably ever be put into practice. In summary, the "Joint Copyright" does not add any useful rights that the contributor would not otherwise have, and is therefore just for show. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
> the means you are using to change the situation (flooding > dev@ list with offtopic) are wrong. There is nothing off-topic about this discussion. It is highly relevant to every developer who is not also an employee of Sun Microsystems. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Allen Pulsifer wrote: What I would like to consider common sense tells me that of course you continue to be the owner of the code you contributed, Caolan continues to be the owner of the code he contributed... Apparently you have not read the terms of the copyright assignment. I think Frank is talking about http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/jca.pdf section 2: "2. Contributor hereby assigns to Sun _joint_ ownership ... Contributor retains the right to use the Contribution for Contributor's own purposes. ..." what is your point here ? Martin - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
> What I would like to consider common sense tells me that of > course you continue to be the owner of the code you > contributed, Caolan continues to be the owner of the code he > contributed... Apparently you have not read the terms of the copyright assignment. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
> 2. yes, FSF doesn't accept e.g. non-paper-worked contributions to > free software it maintains, e.g. Emacs. The obvious point, if we must belabor it, is that an organization like FSF would "never" take an open source program to which it held an assigned copyright and re-license it under a commercial license. The FSF's intentions and practices are very different from Sun's. Sun is explicitly asking for copyright assignment so that it can re-license the contributions under a commercial license to anyone it chooses. Many potential contributors would consider assigning copyright to a foundation such as FSF to be very different than assigning copyright to a corporation such as Sun for their commercial use. For that reason, comparisons between Sun's practices and the FSF's practices, or comparison to the practices of any similar non-profit or foundation such as the Apache Project, etc., are not very relevant and are in fact misleading, IMPO. Allen - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hello Michael, > I commit it, and wow - we really have a joint ownership ! you are > right :-) it actually fulfills the definition of 'joint'-ness briefly. > by revision 1.3 - 'rt' is changing the license - at least this is > probably only removing headers: so, perhaps I still own it. > but by revision 1.5 my friend Frank commits some warning removal > changes [ thanks :-) ]: and bingo - the only owner of that entire module > is Sun. > ... > The situation is worse if any two non-Sun people collaborate, say - > Caolan fixes a bug in my brand-new code: despite Sun having never > touched it, it becomes the only owner of the complete work :-) > > So, again - I assert that the only real owner of the code is Sun - and > in the tiny fraction of cases where that is briefly not so, it only > needs to touch the module, run indent on it, fix a warning or whatever > and it is so. What I would like to consider common sense tells me that of course you continue to be the owner of the code you contributed, Caolan continues to be the owner of the code he contributed (so both your examples are wrong), and minor changes not relevant to functionality don't change the ownership (so your last claim is wrong, too). In particular with the last item, I am uncertain whether lawyer's sense is the same as common sense here, of course. Which is the reason why I can't and won't continue discussing this - IANAL. However, I somehow have the feeling if we really need to pick nits at this level, then we have other problems. Ciao Frank -- - Frank Schönheit, Software Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED] - - Sun Microsystems http://www.sun.com/staroffice - - OpenOffice.org Base http://dba.openoffice.org - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Michael Meeks wrote: > So - since you want to kill the thread, lets try to do that; but first > I must address this: I don't want to kill the thread - I'm not even empowered to do that. :-) Please see at the end of the mail what I wanted to see stopped. > Unfortunately, reading back, it looks as if: before Martin checked with > the lawyers and confirmed that you did not have such a relationship > (thanks Martin), you argument was framed only in defense of Sun's right > to re-license our code under any terms :-) > > It's good to see the principle laid out clearly: that Sun will not deal > with Butler-alikes, that it would be ridiculous to do so & I welcome > that & couldn't agree more. As you brought me in context I must add something here. I can't speak for Sun in a legal meaning - so can't Martin. That's the reason why he checked back with Sun Legal, just to be able to give a definitive answer (as this was asked for). I didn't say that I don't believe that Sun would relicence the code under any terms. Of course that is possible in the same way as Novell does with Mono. And Sun does mention that on the SCA FAQ page as I quoted in one of my mails. So does Novell on the Mono contribution page. I absolutely understand if people take this fact as a reason not to contribute. For me that wouldn't be a problem. If a company gave me the opportunity to get some useful open source software and adjust it to my needs I would gladly accept that wonderful opportunity and contribute my code back. That would be my "thank you" for the huge amount of work that the company already had invested and that gives me a benefit. Unfortunately I'm not interested enough in e.g. Mono to proove that ;-), so you must take my word for it. I hope that is enough. Of course, as always, YMMV. Or better: we know that your mileage varies. You told it to us all too often to overlook that. Insinuating a participation of Sun in the case of "Butler office" really is ridiculous. *That* is the stupid part of the thread I would like to see stopped. The rest might still be boring, as it presents the same arguments we heard days, weeks or months ago (and probably we will also hear days, weeks and months later), but that's life. Ciao, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer (mba) - Project Lead OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS Please don't reply to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". I use it for the OOo lists and only rarely read other mails sent to it. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hi Mathias, So - since you want to kill the thread, lets try to do that; but first I must address this: On Wed, 2008-02-06 at 23:48 +0100, Mathias Bauer wrote: > What makes you think it could be anything else? Wow, how easy it is to > get some public interest. It's enough to give others some reasons to > cultivate their paranoia. How many licensees are there of our code in OO.o, and under what terms ? without knowing that, it's really hard to say; that is my point. Clearly I would hope and expect that (in the absence of a compelling commercial reason to do otherwise), Sun would act in a way to safeguard the OO.o project, ensure that code changes get back up-stream under the LGPL etc. > Novell even states explicitly that this is the reason why they ask for > a copyright assignment. As does Sun. > Whether Novell already does business like that (Michael > calls it "ripping off people's code) is something I don't care for. It's amazing the concern that is suddenly shown for code that was not written or contributed by Sun, or you, or me :-) I'm interested in the relevant code for this forum: that contributed to OpenOffice; rather than some wider discussion about Java, OpenSolaris, NetBeans [ or whatever ]. Presumably each project can decide for itself. Let me clarify ripping off, since that unfortunately ended up seeming offensive to you. I would personally feel ripped off, if my code ended up in a commercial product, which clearly had modified & improved that code, and where the improvements were not available to all under the LGPL, in OO.o. > I just would like to stop this stupid discussion started by Michael's > ridiculous idea that Sun would make business with a "company" like > butler office. I still can't believe that this is really what he thinks. This would have been an effective end-thread, as a #1 reply :-) Unfortunately, reading back, it looks as if: before Martin checked with the lawyers and confirmed that you did not have such a relationship (thanks Martin), you argument was framed only in defense of Sun's right to re-license our code under any terms :-) It's good to see the principle laid out clearly: that Sun will not deal with Butler-alikes, that it would be ridiculous to do so & I welcome that & couldn't agree more. Regards, Michael. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
On Wed, 2008-02-06 at 15:35 +0100, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: > but when it comes to Gnome it would be quite surprizing to have no > copyright assignment. For the main, copyright assignment has been the exception, rather than the norm. Gnome, KDE/Koffice, the Linux Kernel, Wine, and thousands of others; none of them require assignment. Of course, the FSF projects, glibc, gcc etc. have historically required complete assignment - OTOH, these are not viewed as the most dynamic and successful projects, and of course the FSF is starkly different from a for-profit entity as we know. Clearly people pushing assignment tend to trot out another list, but the wider picture is clear. IMHO the recent drift towards assignment reflects the growing interest from corporations in Free software, and some of the conflicts and problems opening up the source of proprietary products. Sun / OO.o just happens to be a trail-blazer here. > Anyway, it does not change the rest of what we discussed (Mono, other > Novell software, FSF, Mozilla, etc.) It interests me too that you think Mozilla is a copyright assignment project; http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/form.html - if you read their form, you will see it includes a certification of origin, an acceptance that contributed code will be NPL/MPL and so on. Where is the all encompasing copyright assignment ? I was surprised to (not) see that myself, inasmuch that they have an independent organisation, and apparently a sensible structure that could let them have such an impartial steward; and I too was (mis?)-lead to believe that this was necessary for dual licensing (MPL/GPL eg.). Thanks, Michael. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Mr. Meeks, the means you are using to change the situation (flooding dev@ list with offtopic) are wrong. So would you, please, be so kind as to stop distracting developers from being productive? Thank you very much for understanding. Regards, K. Palagin. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Dear Frank, On Wed, 2008-02-06 at 16:31 +0100, Frank Schönheit Germany wrote: > > OpenOffice project code: > > Sun the only owner: 100% > > LGPL eclectic (or better) ownership: 0% > > the "only" is plain not true, as you very well now. The term is *Joint* > copyright Assignment. You don't do your standing a good with repeating > wrong facts. The intent is not to mislead, but present the reality. I would argue that talk of "Joint", and "Shared" in copyright assignments (by contrast) is to market the unpleasant fact with meaningless friendly sounding terms :-) ie. the plain truth is perhaps not quite as obvious as you suggest. Lets take an example in your area: connectivity/source/drivers/evoab2 I commit it, and wow - we really have a joint ownership ! you are right :-) it actually fulfills the definition of 'joint'-ness briefly. by revision 1.3 - 'rt' is changing the license - at least this is probably only removing headers: so, perhaps I still own it. but by revision 1.5 my friend Frank commits some warning removal changes [ thanks :-) ]: and bingo - the only owner of that entire module is Sun. Where now the 'joint-ness' ? since I don't own your changes, and (over time) those are inevitably made to any piece of code if only to stop bit-rot, the "joint" sense becomes meaningless from day two. The situation is worse if any two non-Sun people collaborate, say - Caolan fixes a bug in my brand-new code: despite Sun having never touched it, it becomes the only owner of the complete work :-) So, again - I assert that the only real owner of the code is Sun - and in the tiny fraction of cases where that is briefly not so, it only needs to touch the module, run indent on it, fix a warning or whatever and it is so. Can you articulate any meaningful rights granted by the 'Joint'-ness or 'Shared'-ness of these licenses ? it's possible I'm just missing them somewhere. Regards, Michael. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Michael Meeks wrote: > On Wed, 2008-02-06 at 16:55 +0100, Mathias Bauer wrote: >> Well, I once tried to use Evolution and there are many other reasons >> that come into my mind why people don't have any interest in it. > > Haha :-) I once tried using OpenOffice too, it's user-interface was > perfection: no changes welcome. OK, I was just pulling your leg. Sorry for that. > Of course you can :-) I spent some time explaining that the vast > majority of that code is CA free (I call that eclectic ownership). How much code is CA free doesn't make a difference - it doesn't change the fact that only Novell is able to licence the whole stuff under proprietary conditions. With regard to our current discussion this is the identical situation as in case of OOo. >> I'm still right with the more important first sentence that you didn't >> comment: creating extensions is a way to contribute to OOo without >> signing an SCA. > > Sure, and it's also a sure way to be condemned to irrelevance, complete > with gut-wrenching pain for the user (as I outlined), and is simply a > non-solution. That's your opinion. I don't believe that (Sun itself does provide functionality as extensions). And as you are doing your own builds anyway where you can include extensions easily - why bother? Ciao, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer (mba) - Project Lead OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS Please don't reply to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". I use it for the OOo lists and only rarely read other mails sent to it. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Jonathan Pryor wrote: > (This was the point to Michael's query about Butler Office -- for all we > knew, Butler *had* a license from Sun to release it, and there's nothing > anyone could have done about it it. Whoever "Butler office" is they had the same licence as all - LGPL. What makes you think it could be anything else? Wow, how easy it is to get some public interest. It's enough to give others some reasons to cultivate their paranoia. > We now know from Martin that this > isn't the case. However, we also have no assurance that Butler won't > offer [insert obscene amount of money here] to Sun for a proprietary > license to the code, and Sun wold be fully within their rights to accept > this offer. Would Sun accept such an offer? Probably not today. But > in 10-20 years, under new management? Who can say?) The same is true for Novell and its projects, isn't it? Novell even states explicitly that this is the reason why they ask for a copyright assignment. Whether Novell already does business like that (Michael calls it "ripping off people's code) is something I don't care for. I just would like to stop this stupid discussion started by Michaels ridiculous idea that Sun would make business with a "company" like butler office. I still can't believe that this is really what he thinks. > As for Gnome and the FSF, and this should be obvious, their requirements > for copyright assignment (or lack thereof in the case of Gnome) really > aren't relevant here, as neither organization is a commercial entity, Agreed. It's relevant as an argument for the general usefulness of a copyright assignment, but it doesn't help discussing the questions of mistrust, paranoia and the like we have ended with. Ciao, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer (mba) - Project Lead OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS Please don't reply to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". I use it for the OOo lists and only rarely read other mails sent to it. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Michael Meeks schrieb: >> But a clarification of the implications of the JCA wasn't what Michael >> Meeks asked for (and BTW also nobody else until now). He pointed at >> Sun for asking for a JCA without mentioning that his company is doing >> exactly the same in other projects. I felt the need to correct that >> false impression. > > As you know from my blog, I've been extremely up-front about this (much > as, incidentally, I disapprove of & would improve Novell's copyright > assignment > practices around evolution & mono): Your blog is completely irrelevant here. If you are putting your accusations on the mailing list you will be judged by what you write here. It's quite possible that people reading here never came across your blog. So there *was* a false impression. And I welcome that you have helped to correct it after my intervention. My point is that the people leading Mono or many other projects know that a copyright assignment is necessary (at least for projects that have some relevance outside of the company that created it) and so they ask for it. The same does Sun for OOo. This is not "good" or "bad" - it's just vital for the project's future. Your argument about your personal feelings wrt. to the copyright assignment practice at Novell is not relevant. It's easy to argue against them because it's clear that this won't change anything. The people leading the projects know that the copyright assignment is necessary for them, regardless of what Michael Meeks, Mathias Bauer or anybody else might think. I also don't believe that you will fight against the CA in Novell's projects with the same dilligence, noise and press hype as you do in case of OOo but of course I also don't expect that. ;-) Perhaps now we can head for something completely different. I'm still hoping that we can reestablish the good relationship we once had and that I enjoyed a lot. You have made your point: you don't like the SCA. We all know it now. That's enough. Ciao, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer (mba) - Project Lead OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS Please don't reply to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". I use it for the OOo lists and only rarely read other mails sent to it. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
On Wed, 2008-02-06 at 16:31 +0100, Frank Schönheit - Sun Microsystems
Germany wrote:
> Hi Michael,
>
> > OpenOffice project code:
> > Sun the only owner: 100%
> > LGPL eclectic (or better) ownership: 0%
>
> the "only" is plain not true, as you very well now. The term is *Joint*
> copyright Assignment. You don't do your standing a good with repeating
> wrong facts.
The problem with such Joint copyright ownership is that it leaves the
potential for a "everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others"
environment.
In this case, everyone has LGPL access to the source code ("everyone is
equal"), but Sun has rights that no one else enjoys, such as the ability
to release binary-only versions of OpenOffice.org (Star Office), or to
license OpenOffice.org sources to a 3rd party outside of the LGPL.
(This was the point to Michael's query about Butler Office -- for all we
knew, Butler *had* a license from Sun to release it, and there's nothing
anyone could have done about it it. We now know from Martin that this
isn't the case. However, we also have no assurance that Butler won't
offer [insert obscene amount of money here] to Sun for a proprietary
license to the code, and Sun wold be fully within their rights to accept
this offer. Would Sun accept such an offer? Probably not today. But
in 10-20 years, under new management? Who can say?)
*This* is the primary problem with copyright assignments, and why
projects requiring them historically haven't done as well as projects
that don't require copyright assignments. In general, people don't like
a "some are more equal than others" environment, and avoid them.
A "solution" to this would be a JCA that explicitly states that the
contributed code will only be usable under the LGPL or another open
source license; at least this way the "more equal than others"
capabilities would be limited, thus keeping them less "more equal than
others."
A related problem with the "Joint" copyright assignment is that the
contributor does not have copyright ownership of all improvements made
to that code. This further promotes the "some are more equal than
others" motif, as the original contributor effectively retains only
LGPL access to their own work (if they're at all interested in any
improvements, which one assumes they would be).
As for Gnome and the FSF, and this should be obvious, their requirements
for copyright assignment (or lack thereof in the case of Gnome) really
aren't relevant here, as neither organization is a commercial entity,
beholden to stockholders that insist they be ever more profitable. Sun
*is* a commercial entity, *is* beholden to stockholders, and thus Sun's
behavior isn't as readily comparable. (Rather like Microsoft having a
monopoly in operating systems doesn't prevent Apple or Linux from
bundling ever more software with their systems -- rules that apply to
one group do not necessarily apply to the other.) Again, this should be
obvious, but apparently isn't.
- Jon
-
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hi Michael, Michael Meeks wrote: [...] No, in fact what most disappoints me most today, is the merging of the hostile duplication of Kohei's solver yesterday - despite requests not to do so until the (does it even exist ?) Advisory Board reports back on it's meetings. Apparently Sun cares -not at all- about causing (possibly unnecessary) hurt there, or knows something we don't. Oh, and trust-wise, we're still waiting for Jim "I will report out after the first meeting, which is Nov. 1, 2007."[1] Parkinson. Of course 'after' leaves some considerable chronological lee-way, and probably it's unreasonable to expect a speedy reaction from Sun, but still, 3 months on, one has to wonder wrt. Sun's sincerity here. Yet again, lots of nice words - and apparently no action. I've posted the notes of the meeting and they have been uploaded by Andre here [1]. The fact that these notes have took month to be posted are not Sun only fault but *all* the members who were very slow to post their comments. Then most of the members were in vacations during January until the 25th... Sun is not the only member of this AB and each member is responsible in front of the the actions that have to be done within it and reported to the community. And I feel responsible too, this is why I have asked for an update last week and reported to the CC. As you, I'm not pleased that it takes so much time for a move, but it's like that and this is not the fault of only one, we are all to blame here. Kind regards Sophie [1]http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Community_Council_Minutes#2007-12-06 - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hi Michael, Sorry if this mail appears twice, the first was with a wrong address Michael Meeks wrote: [...] > No, in fact what most disappoints me most today, is the merging of the > hostile duplication of Kohei's solver yesterday - despite requests not > to do so until the (does it even exist ?) Advisory Board reports back on > it's meetings. Apparently Sun cares -not at all- about causing (possibly > unnecessary) hurt there, or knows something we don't. > > Oh, and trust-wise, we're still waiting for Jim "I will report out > after the first meeting, which is Nov. 1, 2007."[1] Parkinson. > > Of course 'after' leaves some considerable chronological lee-way, and > probably it's unreasonable to expect a speedy reaction from Sun, but > still, 3 months on, one has to wonder wrt. Sun's sincerity here. Yet > again, lots of nice words - and apparently no action. I've posted the notes of the meeting and they have been uploaded by Andre here [1]. The fact that these notes have took month to be posted are not Sun only fault but *all* the members who were very slow to post their comments. Then most of the members were in vacations during January until the 25th... Sun is not the only member of this AB and each member is responsible in front of the the actions that have to be done within it and reported to the community. And I feel responsible too, this is why I have asked for an update last week and reported to the CC. As you, I'm not pleased that it takes so much time for a move, but it's like that and this is not the fault of only one, we are all to blame here. Kind regards Sophie [1]http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Community_Council_Minutes#2007-12-06 - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Michael Meeks schrieb: > Hi Mathias, > > Good to hear from you again :-) > > On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 21:11 +0100, Mathias Bauer wrote: >> It's not so uncommon that the major contributor of a project wants >> to preserve the ability to relicence the code and so requires the >> copyright for code contributions from others. > > Insisting on copyright assignment to a single company, is IMHO a good > way to doom a project to not getting widespread corporate contributions, > and thus to subtantially hurt it's development. As Federico[1] says, > this is exactly why evolution failed to attract outside contributors. Well, I once tried to use Evolution and there are many other reasons that come into my mind why people don't have any interest in it. > Now, of course OO.o includes chunks of LGPL code in the 'external' > module, but (as we have seen) these are somehow 'different' and it's not > possible to include new functionality as plugins that is LGPL, or > [ insert vague, inexplicable, non-convincing reason here for excluding > LGPL plugins from the product ]. You can create extensions without signing an SCA and there is no problem with licencing the source code under LGPL. And you should know that as you have been told several times. I'm really getting tired mentioning it again and again. >> OpenOffice.org also offers a way to contribute without a JCA: >> developers can provide extensions that can be distributed and >> installed separately. That's more than you can get in most other Open >> Source projects (including the ones I mentioned above). > > Interesting - you can't write plugins using Mono, or for Evolution ? > and you can't do so without assigning ownership to Novell - that is > indeed news to me. IMHO, you mis-place your hope in a plugin panacea. If I'm wrong with my last sentence and you can indeed contribute plugins *to* Mono (not *using* mono) without a CA, sorry, I stand corrected. I'm still right with the more important first sentence that you didn't comment: creating extensions is a way to contribute to OOo without signing an SCA. We already tried to explain it to you some time ago but we can discuss the "HowTo" again at the next ESC meeting and post the results whereever you like. Ciao, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer (mba) - Project Lead OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS Please don't reply to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". I use it for the OOo lists and only rarely read other mails sent to it. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hi Michael, > OpenOffice project code: > Sun the only owner: 100% > LGPL eclectic (or better) ownership: 0% the "only" is plain not true, as you very well now. The term is *Joint* copyright Assignment. You don't do your standing a good with repeating wrong facts. Ciao Frank -- - Frank Schönheit, Software Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED] - - Sun Microsystems http://www.sun.com/staroffice - - OpenOffice.org Base http://dba.openoffice.org - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hi Mathias, Good to hear from you again :-) On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 21:11 +0100, Mathias Bauer wrote: > It's not so uncommon that the major contributor of a project wants > to preserve the ability to relicence the code and so requires the > copyright for code contributions from others. Insisting on copyright assignment to a single company, is IMHO a good way to doom a project to not getting widespread corporate contributions, and thus to subtantially hurt it's development. As Federico[1] says, this is exactly why evolution failed to attract outside contributors. > Here's another prominent example that Michael perhaps just has forgotten: Not at all, lets do a comparison. Of the two: evolution & Mono the best is with Mono - evolution is a far older project, doesn't reflect current thinking, doesn't have a comparable weak copy-left license etc. > When a developer contributes code to the C# compiler or the Mono runtime > engine, we require that the author grants Novell the right to relicense > his/her contribution under other licensing terms. ... > This allows Novell to re-distribute the Mono source code to parties that > might not want to use the GPL or LGPL versions of the code. So, this so good - you put your finger on a reasonable analogy to OO.o here - and, while I personally dislike Mono's assymetry, and think it unhealthy for even the core, lets look at the facts on the ground (simplified): Mono: Mit-X11/LGPL eclectic ownership: 86% ~950kloc + just mcs => excluding vast chunks of code => worst case mono core - LGPL + Novell ownership: 14% ~150kloc OpenOffice project code: Sun the only owner: 100% LGPL eclectic (or better) ownership: 0% If you want to include your nice, pluggable FooFeature into Mono, and it's LGPL licensed there is simply no issue AFAICS, you grow the 85% +. Conversely - working with Sun - you can't join the 0% - you have to assign *it all* to Sun. ie. there is a difference here - and it is one of open-ness, inclusion, and the magnitude of the exclusive ownership assymetry. The Mono approach, while I don't like it that much, seems infinitely (86/0) more reasonable - akin to (say) holding the copyright on UNO, but not on the rest of OO.o. Now, of course OO.o includes chunks of LGPL code in the 'external' module, but (as we have seen) these are somehow 'different' and it's not possible to include new functionality as plugins that is LGPL, or [ insert vague, inexplicable, non-convincing reason here for excluding LGPL plugins from the product ]. Naturally, I have sympathy with Sun's struggle, the fact that it was a pioneer in open-sourcing such a large project, the fact that it is wrestling with understanding the consequences of that, and claims it is trying to move towards a fair and really open development model. I am simply highly skeptical that it is aiming at a fair, broad-based model, whereby OpenOffice.org gets as good as it needs to, as fast as it needs to for us to compete - instead preferring a narrow "Sun owns everything" model which will ultimately be doomed to slow, painful failure. > Moreover, discussing copyright assignments only in the context of > OpenOffice.org and "forgetting" other projects is unfair (to say the > least). That's even worse than useless. ;-) You talk as if these were even related, last I checked this was the OpenOffice mailing list, and the situation with these projects is, as we have seen, different in many ways. > OpenOffice.org also offers a way to contribute without a JCA: > developers can provide extensions that can be distributed and > installed separately. That's more than you can get in most other Open > Source projects (including the ones I mentioned above). Interesting - you can't write plugins using Mono, or for Evolution ? and you can't do so without assigning ownership to Novell - that is indeed news to me. IMHO, you mis-place your hope in a plugin panacea. OpenOffice has enough acute usability problems without adding yet more of the form: "that file I sent you didn't load ?" "did you try browsing to XYZ web-site first, finding ABC plugin, downloading & installing that !? "actually no - I used the defaults" This is first-class usability design :-) quite brilliant ! inclusion into the (apparently) 'Open' Office product is all I care about here - and Sun demands to own everything there: everything, down to each comma in the documentation[3]. Not just the bit it (mostly) wrote, but everyone else's code too. Oh, and it's always been like that so it must be alright :-) So the punch line is (basically) - sure you can write stuff, but Sun's web-site (openoffice.org) won't ship it, very few people will use it, oh - and we'll duplicate it if we want it in our product. > And mainly because of that I als
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Michael Meeks schrieb: > Quite :-) if I worked for Sun, I'm sure it would seem obvious that I > had the moral right to proprietarily license all other people's code / > translations / documentation etc. contributed to OO.o in perpetuity. I > would also be certain that that right would always be used wisely, never > abused, never used to hurt OpenOffice, or other contributors. Since I > don't work for Sun I'm far less certain. I don't work for Novell, so I'm also "far less certain" about what your company might do behind the scenes. But you never will find me spreading FUD about that as you do in case of Sun. So I won't "counter" your public statement of mistrust against Sun with an own public statement of misstrust against Novell. But I hope that everybody sees that continueing to argue on that level doesn't work. If one reads the Novell CA and the SCA both make clear that eventually contributions end up in proprietary arrangements. You tell me that you are certain that Novell won't abuse that right, I assume the same for Sun. So what shall we do now: "I'm good, you are evil!" "No, *I* am a good, *you* are evil!" Sounds like kindergarten stuff to me - or, as the great philophers from Monty Python's Flying Circus said: "This is not an argument, this is contradiction!" You are permanently accusing people that work on the same project as you without the slightest proof that anything like what you accuse them for has ever happened or will ever happen. You even created the ridiculous impression that Sun could make business with such dubious "Butler Office" crap. You must be very desperate if you take this completely irrelevant "Butler office" as a welcome event to continue your crusade against the SCA. I'm really tired to read the same stuff again and again, each time with "arguments" more far-fetched than those you presented before. If you want to be taken serious in future you should stop your FUD and insults (Yes, I feel offended by your ridiculous accusations and allegations!). I got it: you don't trust Sun, so you obviously also don't trust me. I can live with that. But meanwhile we all know it. Repetitio non placet. Ciao, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer (mba) - Project Lead OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS Please don't reply to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". I use it for the OOo lists and only rarely read other mails sent to it. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hey Hubert, Le 6 févr. 08 à 15:30, Hubert Figuiere a écrit : On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 18:51 +0100, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: A quite practical situation, even if the terms of the JCA themselves could certainly be improved. But after all you know the benefits of such copyright covenants, as Gnome and Evolution provide their developers with similar terms. Maybe you should get you facts straight up. Gnome does not require any copyright assignment to be able to contribute. And for Evolution it is apparently no longer required, as http://live.gnome.org/Evolution does not mention anything for whoever is interested in contributing. Well, I think links were posted earlier. Perhaps you're right on Evolution, but when it comes to Gnome it would be quite surprizing to have no copyright assignment. Anyway, it does not change the rest of what we discussed (Mono, other Novell software, FSF, Mozilla, etc.) Cheers, Charles. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 18:51 +0100, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: > A quite practical situation, even if the terms of the JCA themselves > could certainly be improved. But after all you know the benefits of > such copyright covenants, as Gnome and Evolution provide their > developers with similar terms. Maybe you should get you facts straight up. Gnome does not require any copyright assignment to be able to contribute. And for Evolution it is apparently no longer required, as http://live.gnome.org/Evolution does not mention anything for whoever is interested in contributing. Hub - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Michael, I'm truly sorry you take things in that way. It's not my intent to criticize you personally, I would never dare to do such a thing. Just realize that you cannot come out in public by suspecting Sun -or anybody else- to have ulterior motives without sound arguments, and it appears you don't have any, for the moment. The problem is, you work for a corporation that is going quite against anything we're fighting for, and goes certainly in a sense that is contrary to what we're building. I'm becoming tired of stumbling upon legal agreements between MS, Novell and customers that validate every piece of FUD some have ever spoken about FOSS and Open Standards. I'm getting tired of reading in French newspapers that "thanks to Novell, OpenOffice.org is now a viable alternative to MS Office 97 (PC Expert a few months ago, interview of a Novell sales rep or manager)" "Questions about formats?OOXML just works with OpenOffice Novell Edition" "Novell is the second largest contributor to OpenOffice.org" Thank you, with this kind of contributor we don't need any competitor! You will notice we don't really hear the same thing from Sun or anybody else. Heck, even IBM didn't do such a wrong to us in all the years they were refusing to contribute to OOo. I understand you are not in charge of your employer's corporate strategy, that's quite natural. But please, have the decency to look at your shoes before posting such accusations; yours are dirtier than the ones of many others here. Best, Charles. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Pavel Janík wrote: Hi, "How can we know that is not the case ?" [ that Sun have not licensed to Butler ] this is very interesting question. There is no agreement with Butler, I handed over this to our legal department, I will keep you updated, Martin - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hi Pavel, On Wed, 2008-02-06 at 12:24 +0100, Pavel Janík wrote: > > "How can we know that is not the case ?" > > [ that Sun have not licensed to Butler ] > > this is very interesting question. indeed. > But completely bad audience. Sure - well, my thinking is that dev@ people write the code that is apparently getting ripped off (or not?), and consequently they have an interest in ensuring fair play, and of course better understanding the terms they contribute under. Is there a better list for this though ? discuss ? > I also don't ask you, Michael, if Novell has some (other than you > know ;-) agreement with Microsoft. Feel free to if it's relevant, at least I can try to find that out if you have a concrete question, or at least find someone who can give a reasonable answer. The chance of Novell licensing OO.o code to anyone is small, since we don't own it; Sun does. Perhaps if a conclusion of the thread is that there is a concern here, it can be codified into a query for Sun legal or whatever - but discussing that in public seems healthy surely ? Thanks, Michael. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Ah Charles ! The sound of your typing fills me with joy :-) On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 18:51 +0100, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: > > Sure - so (it seems to me) rather hard for anyone except Sun to > > prosecute an LGPL violation here - > > Indeed, they're the copyright holder of the entirety of the code. That has nothing to do with it. If an individual contributed his code for the "Frobnicate" feature, and noticed Butler shipping with it, in violation of the GPL he could address that violation in the courts (as I understand it). Apparently SCO created a huge scene around a few lines of allegedly copied code (that they didn't own AFAICS, IANAL etc.). > Of course, the main difference here is that it's up to Sun, not to > Novell to call the shots. Quite :-) if I worked for Sun, I'm sure it would seem obvious that I had the moral right to proprietarily license all other people's code / translations / documentation etc. contributed to OO.o in perpetuity. I would also be certain that that right would always be used wisely, never abused, never used to hurt OpenOffice, or other contributors. Since I don't work for Sun I'm far less certain. > And despite the existence of legal agreements between Sun and MS, at > least we're not being infected as a result of the active and lavish > collaboration of your company with Redmond. Personally, I think you can get infected just reading my E-mail, be warned ! ;-) and really, it might be better for you not to. It's also critical to understand that there are no legal agreements whatsoever between Sun and MS, nor any active collaboration on any topic - so that's all right: the world is still high-contrast black & white. Sun white, Novell Black :-) > In short, criticzing the JCA may be valid, but it's particularly > unappropriate - or perhaps just pathetic- coming from you. Play the man, not the ball - that's my advice :-) it's much easier & more fun, and avoids the need for critical thought. > But don't you think Sun developers on this list would know if their > company was in business with Butler? No idea if Sun developers generally know how the code is licensed, under what terms & to whom. I could continue addressing other such nonsense as: > OpenSuse is directly copyrighted to Novell. Cool, OO.o is included in OpenSUSE so we own the copyright ! [ or not ] :-) > just like many Gnome projects and the Gnome desktop as a whole also > has an copyright umbrella (under the Gnome Foundation). I've no idea what method you use to generate such a confusion of issues, are you sure it's legal ? :-) ATB, Michael. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hi, "How can we know that is not the case ?" [ that Sun have not licensed to Butler ] this is very interesting question. But completely bad audience. I also don't ask you, Michael, if Novell has some (other than you know ;-) agreement with Microsoft. -- Pavel Janík - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hi Michael Michael Meeks wrote (6-2-2008 12:02) On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 20:57 +0100, Cor Nouws wrote: Michael Meeks wrote (5-2-2008 17:30) Sure - so (it seems to me) rather hard for anyone except Sun to prosecute an LGPL violation here - since it's quite possible that these guys have a confidential agreement with Sun that makes it perfectly legal for them to rip off people's code, and their customers, and get away with it. How can we know that is not the case ? How can anyone be sure if litigation was commenced, Sun wouldn't just settle for cash. One of the deep joys of the JCA with it's single steward. Writing this like you do, reads to me as if you are actually suspecting Sun. Is there any clear reason why you do so, or why we should? If not, it is a more theoretical discussion, which could benefit from other wording, IMO. Sure - there is an easy reply to this question from Sun :-) that is for them to simply divulge whom it has licensed OpenOffice.org to, and under what terms. One again, I read suspicion from the words you choose and your answer is not straight to me. It can be my relatively low knowledge of the English language. But as I see it: when you work in the same project, it makes no sense (...) to give the impression that you might have a reason to accuse someone else in that project. I hope you can understand how I feel. Kindest regards, Cor -- "The Year of 3" -2008- "Het jaar van 3" Cor Nouws Arnhem - Netherlands - nl.OpenOffice.org - marketing contact - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hi Mathias, On Wed, 2008-02-06 at 10:33 +0100, Mathias Bauer wrote: > >| By accepting an SCA, Sun > >| > >| * promises that your contributions will remain Free and open-source > >| software (i.e. will be published and will remain available by Sun > >| under a Free or open-source software license). Which as we all know is meaningless beyond the "here, you can have your own patch back, under the license you gave it to us" - this can be relatively easily achieved with a backup tape, a public svn archive or somesuch. It sounds nice, but it gives no assurance. On the other hand, I would agree that it's possible to make a case that Sun presents their legal position clearly - yet there is a large degree of smoke & mirrors around how this relates to "community", and the empowerment of that IMHO (and growing corporate contributions). I'm not convinced as Allen says that many developers realise that Butler may be acting perfectly legally and within rights Sun have given them. > But a clarification of the implications of the JCA wasn't what Michael > Meeks asked for (and BTW also nobody else until now). He pointed at > Sun for asking for a JCA without mentioning that his company is doing > exactly the same in other projects. I felt the need to correct that > false impression. As you know from my blog, I've been extremely up-front about this (much as, incidentally, I disapprove of & would improve Novell's copyright assignment practices around evolution & mono): http://www.gnome.org/~michael/activity.html#2007-10-02 which I excerpt: "We work closely with Sun's (excellent) engineers on joint development projects such as OpenXML import, VBA interop, core application features, re-factoring old code etc. To put it another way - we know Sun re-licenses this code as proprietary software, for it's own advantage, and we like our friends to be *** able to eat. Novell even uses a similar structure in two *** other very limited scenarios: for a tiny fraction of Mono, and *** for evolution. " "What we don't like is the insistence that all and any contributed code, shipped at OpenOffice.org must end up being owned by Sun." There are substantial differences in practice between Sun & Novell's approach here - but clearly as I've written before aggregating ownership is often sensible (depending on licensing) - it's the fair exercise of stewardship of those rights that is the more interesting thing. Hence my original question: "How can we know that is not the case ?" [ that Sun have not licensed to Butler ] A question apparently no-one seems eager to answer interestingly. HTH, Michael. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hi, On 5.2.2008, at 21:00, Allen Pulsifer wrote: Heck, even the FSF does that... You're telling me that the FSF will not accept contributions to an open source project 1. I do not know about any open source project FSF maintains 2. yes, FSF doesn't accept e.g. non-paper-worked contributions to free software it maintains, e.g. Emacs. -- Pavel Janík - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hi Cor, On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 20:57 +0100, Cor Nouws wrote: > > One of the deep joys of the JCA with it's single steward. > > Writing this like you do, reads to me as if you are actually suspecting > Sun. Is there any clear reason why you do so, or why we should? > If not, it is a more theoretical discussion, which could benefit from > other wording, IMO. Sure - there is an easy reply to this question from Sun :-) that is for them to simply divulge whom it has licensed OpenOffice.org to, and under what terms. Interestingly, and (IANAL) if you compare the JCA to the SCA, one of the things that pops up is that the SCA seems to explicitly demand accounting rights, where the JCA apparently does not. SCA: you agree that neither of us has any duty to consult with, obtain the consent of, pay or render an accounting to the other for any use or distribution of your contribution. Clearly an accounting from Sun should be easy to give here, can we have one ? Regards, Michael. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Allen Pulsifer schrieb: >> When a developer contributes code to the C# compiler or the >> Mono runtime engine, we require that the author grants Novell >> the right to relicense his/her contribution under other >> licensing terms. >> >> This allows Novell to re-distribute the Mono source code to >> parties that might not want to use the GPL or LGPL versions >> of the code. > > Thank you for the example. I have to respect the fact the Novell is being > very honest and open about it. Conversely, when discussing the JCA, Sun > studiously avoids mentioning the fact that the JCA allows Sun to relicense > contributions under any license it choose, including a commercial license. I'm not sure if you are right here. Let's look at what Sun writes in his documentation about the contributor agreement, see http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/contributor_agreement.jsp: >| Most importantly from Sun's perspective, it allows the original donor >| of the code base (Sun, for Sun-sponsored projects), *the ability to >| offer commercial, binary distributions* of the project. and >| By accepting an SCA, Sun >| >| * promises that your contributions will remain Free and open-source >| software (i.e. will be published and will remain available by Sun >| under a Free or open-source software license). and >| 2. >| Q: >| What can Sun do with my contribution? >| A: >| Sun may exercise all rights that a copyright holder has and >| It allows Sun to sponsor the projects to which you want to >| contribute, while retaining the ability to offer commercial licenses. and >| Sun will make certain that any >| contributions that are published under any license, are available >| under an FSF or OSI approved license as well. If that really needed more clarification I agree that this should be done, but IMHO this is clear enough. But a clarification of the implications of the JCA wasn't what Michael Meeks asked for (and BTW also nobody else until now). He pointed at Sun for asking for a JCA without mentioning that his company is doing exactly the same in other projects. I felt the need to correct that false impression. Ciao, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer (mba) - Project Lead OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS Please don't reply to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". I use it for the OOo lists and only rarely read other mails sent to it. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
https://www.fsf.org/licensing/assigning.html https://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/why-assign.html Martin Allen Pulsifer wrote: Heck, even the FSF does that... You're telling me that the FSF will not accept contributions to an open source project unless it is given an assignment of copyright that allows it to license the contribution under any terms it wants, including a commercial license? Please direct me to the web page at fsf.org that says this. Allen - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Allen, Le 5 févr. 08 à 21:00, Allen Pulsifer a écrit : Heck, even the FSF does that... You're telling me that the FSF will not accept contributions to an open source project unless it is given an assignment of copyright that allows it to license the contribution under any terms it wants, including a commercial license? Please direct me to the web page at fsf.org that says this. You're mixing two things here: license and copyright. The very fact of owning the copyright automatically gives you the right to relicense the software covered by your copyright under any terms you wish, and this applies to the FSF just like anybody. What the FSF does not do, of course is to develop its software under a dual license of course. What I'm saying about the FSF applies to every software that is called GNU, or more exactly the software projects that have given their copyright to the FSF (i.e, the GNU project): https:// savannah.gnu.org/ (check the copyright notices of the software) I'm surprized that you didn't know this, Allen. By the way, what I'm describing (copyright) is exactly what allows a company like MySQL to have a dual license strategy (GPL + commercial license) Best, Charles. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
> When a developer contributes code to the C# compiler or the > Mono runtime engine, we require that the author grants Novell > the right to relicense his/her contribution under other > licensing terms. > > This allows Novell to re-distribute the Mono source code to > parties that might not want to use the GPL or LGPL versions > of the code. Thank you for the example. I have to respect the fact the Novell is being very honest and open about it. Conversely, when discussing the JCA, Sun studiously avoids mentioning the fact that the JCA allows Sun to relicense contributions under any license it choose, including a commercial license. Here for example is this same pattern of avoidance right here in your post: > In OpenOffice.org the JCA is required only for code > contributed to the core product so that in case a relicencing > might become necessary or desirable (e.g. a licence change > from LGPLv2 to (L)GPLv3) this can be done easily. I think these discussion are very valuable, so that contributors, potential contributors and users can all understand the license terms and its implications. Allen - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Michael Meeks wrote: > On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 00:05 +0900, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote: >> But now that I think about it, since SUN holds the copyright to the >> code it would be actually possible for SUN to make modifications to >> the code without releasing it and that may well happen in StarOffice. > > Sure - so (it seems to me) rather hard for anyone except Sun to > prosecute an LGPL violation here - since it's quite possible that these > guys have a confidential agreement with Sun that makes it perfectly > legal for them to rip off people's code, and their customers, and get > away with it. How can we know that is not the case ? How can anyone be > sure if litigation was commenced, Sun wouldn't just settle for cash. It's not so uncommon that the major contributor of a project wants to preserve the ability to relicence the code and so requires the copyright for code contributions from others. Here's another prominent example that Michael perhaps just has forgotten: -- "Why does Novell require a copyright assignment? When a developer contributes code to the C# compiler or the Mono runtime engine, we require that the author grants Novell the right to relicense his/her contribution under other licensing terms. This allows Novell to re-distribute the Mono source code to parties that might not want to use the GPL or LGPL versions of the code. Particularly embedded system vendors obtain grants to the Mono runtime engine and modify it for their own purposes without having to release those changes back." http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_Licensing -- IIRC the same is true for the Evolution project (also owned by Novell), and some other OS projects as well. At least in case of OpenOffice.org the contributor still keeps the copyright of his own code (but shares it with Sun - JCA = "Joint Copyright Assignment"). I fail to read from the quote above whether this is the case for Mono also or if the contributor completely loses his copyright to Novell (IANAL - maybe someone else is better in reading such statements). What OpenOffice.org, Mono or Evolution are doing is not "ripping off people's code". Every potential contributor knows about the copyright assignment beforehand. He is free to refrain from contributing if that doesn't suit him. I know even at least one case where a developer said that he didn't understand that (yes!) and "wanted his code back". So the OpenOffice.org team removed it from the project (though they already had invested time on helping to integrate it). That's not what I call "ripping off". OpenOffice.org also offers a way to contribute without a JCA: developers can provide extensions that can be distributed and installed separately. That's more than you can get in most other Open Source projects (including the ones I mentioned above). And more and more people are using that way as our growing extensions repository shows. In OpenOffice.org the JCA is required only for code contributed to the core product so that in case a relicencing might become necessary or desirable (e.g. a licence change from LGPLv2 to (L)GPLv3) this can be done easily. Though I tend to see the combination "legal issues" and the word "easy" as an oxymoron. And mainly because of that I also think that discussions like this one are pretty useless. So I just added my 2 cents because I think that at least the facts should be presented completely. Moreover, discussing copyright assignments only in the context of OpenOffice.org and "forgetting" other projects is unfair (to say the least). That's even worse than useless. ;-) 'nuff said. Back to work. Ciao, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer (mba) - Project Lead OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS Please don't reply to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". I use it for the OOo lists and only rarely read other mails sent to it. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
> Heck, even the FSF does that... You're telling me that the FSF will not accept contributions to an open source project unless it is given an assignment of copyright that allows it to license the contribution under any terms it wants, including a commercial license? Please direct me to the web page at fsf.org that says this. Allen - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Mi Michael, Michael Meeks wrote (5-2-2008 17:30) Sure - so (it seems to me) rather hard for anyone except Sun to prosecute an LGPL violation here - since it's quite possible that these guys have a confidential agreement with Sun that makes it perfectly legal for them to rip off people's code, and their customers, and get away with it. How can we know that is not the case ? How can anyone be sure if litigation was commenced, Sun wouldn't just settle for cash. One of the deep joys of the JCA with it's single steward. Writing this like you do, reads to me as if you are actually suspecting Sun. Is there any clear reason why you do so, or why we should? If not, it is a more theoretical discussion, which could benefit from other wording, IMO. Regards, Cor -- "The Year of 3" -2008- "Het jaar van 3" Cor Nouws Arnhem - Netherlands - nl.OpenOffice.org - marketing contact - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Le 5 févr. 08 à 20:37, Allen Pulsifer a écrit : I am quite "amused" -to put things very mildly - to see somebody from Novell make this kind of arguments. Novell does the same thing, and even worse: I'm sorry, are you saying the Novell has an open source project for which it does not accept open source contributions under the same license as the project, but instead asks all contributors to make an unrestricted assignment of their copyrights to Novell? If so, please tell me which project that would be. OpenSuse is directly copyrighted to Novell. Other open source projects such as iFolder, AppArmor would fall in that category although I'm not sure about them (although I don't see them being "given" to an external entity) Evolution, just like many Gnome projects and the Gnome desktop as a whole also has an copyright umbrella (under the Gnome Foundation). Once again, I don't complain about that, I believe it's just normal practice for the majority of FOSS projects. Heck, even the FSF does that... Best, Charles. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
> I am quite > "amused" -to put things very mildly - to see somebody from > Novell make > this kind of arguments. Novell does the same thing, and even worse: I'm sorry, are you saying the Novell has an open source project for which it does not accept open source contributions under the same license as the project, but instead asks all contributors to make an unrestricted assignment of their copyrights to Novell? If so, please tell me which project that would be. Thank you, Allen - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Hello Allen, Le 5 févr. 08 à 19:36, Allen Pulsifer a écrit : Sure - so (it seems to me) rather hard for anyone except Sun to prosecute an LGPL violation here - Indeed, they're the copyright holder of the entirety of the code. Redmond. In short, criticzing the JCA may be valid, but it's particularly unappropriate - or perhaps just pathetic- coming from you. Charles, That comment is way out of bounds. It is very appropriate for Michael to comment on this. Michael's point is this: under the JCA, Novell is the JOINT holder of copyright in all of their contributions to OpenOffice.org. Novell could INDEPENDENTLY assert a copyright violation claim against Butler Office Pro for violating Novell's copyright to Novell's contributions. The problem that Michael is pointing out is that under the JCA, Sun has the right to license Novell's contributions to anyone they want under any terms they want. This means that Sun could simply settle Novell's copyright violation claims against Butler Office behind Novell's back, without Novell's permission, by offering Butler Office a license to Novell's contributions. I think that is the point of Michael's post, So do I. and it is a very valid point. Even though Novell holds joint copyright to their contributions under the JCA, they have essentially surrendering their right to assert copyright violations. And so did we all. I have two comments about this though: the practice of copyright umbrella (call it JCA or SCA or anything else) is widespread in FOSS project. OpenOffice.org is by no way an exception Sun does it, Mozilla does it, Gnome does it, Novell does it, IBM does it I think. This approach has benefits and drawbacks (mainly the ones Michael and you summarized). But what matters at least as much in a conversation is who speaks, and who speaks what words. I am quite "amused" -to put things very mildly - to see somebody from Novell make this kind of arguments. Novell does the same thing, and even worse: Notoriously, disrupting OpenOffice.org's image to the benefit of its own version in the press and to customers and prospects (which is not very constructive) and creating interesting legal situations both of the whole GNU/Linux stack and OpenOffice.org. I'm talking specific legal agreements on "IP protection" from Microsoft made to specific corporate customers. That they do. So I find it quite wild to have somebody from Novell lecturing us about JCA. It might be wiser to look back at one's own business. Cheers, Charles. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
> > Sure - so (it seems to me) rather hard for anyone except Sun to > > prosecute an LGPL violation here - > > Indeed, they're the copyright holder of the entirety of the code. > Redmond. In short, criticzing the JCA may be valid, but it's > particularly unappropriate - or perhaps just pathetic- coming > from you. Charles, That comment is way out of bounds. It is very appropriate for Michael to comment on this. Michael's point is this: under the JCA, Novell is the JOINT holder of copyright in all of their contributions to OpenOffice.org. Novell could INDEPENDENTLY assert a copyright violation claim against Butler Office Pro for violating Novell's copyright to Novell's contributions. The problem that Michael is pointing out is that under the JCA, Sun has the right to license Novell's contributions to anyone they want under any terms they want. This means that Sun could simply settle Novell's copyright violation claims against Butler Office behind Novell's back, without Novell's permission, by offering Butler Office a license to Novell's contributions. I think that is the point of Michael's post, and it is a very valid point. Even though Novell holds joint copyright to their contributions under the JCA, they have essentially surrendering their right to assert copyright violations. Allen - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Butler Office Pro - really a violation ?
Le 5 févr. 08 à 17:30, Michael Meeks a écrit : On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 00:05 +0900, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote: But now that I think about it, since SUN holds the copyright to the code it would be actually possible for SUN to make modifications to the code without releasing it and that may well happen in StarOffice. Sure - so (it seems to me) rather hard for anyone except Sun to prosecute an LGPL violation here - Indeed, they're the copyright holder of the entirety of the code. since it's quite possible that these guys have a confidential agreement with Sun that makes it perfectly legal for them to rip off people's code, and their customers, and get away with it. How can we know that is not the case ? How can anyone be sure if litigation was commenced, Sun wouldn't just settle for cash. One of the deep joys of the JCA with it's single steward. A quite practical situation, even if the terms of the JCA themselves could certainly be improved. But after all you know the benefits of such copyright covenants, as Gnome and Evolution provide their developers with similar terms. Of course, the main difference here is that it's up to Sun, not to Novell to call the shots. And despite the existence of legal agreements between Sun and MS, at least we're not being infected as a result of the active and lavish collaboration of your company with Redmond. In short, criticzing the JCA may be valid, but it's particularly unappropriate - or perhaps just pathetic- coming from you. Is there an update on Butler Office ? they clearly have a nerve using Microsoft's Office logo & claiming 100% compatibility too ;-) And in that regard, they're not that different from Novell. But don't you think Sun developers on this list would know if their company was in business with Butler? Best, Charles. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
