On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 06:57:29PM +0100, Ondrej Certik wrote:
>
> Hi Kirr,
>
> >> Well, read this post:
> >>
> >> http://www.miriamruiz.es/weblog/?p=192
> >>
> >> so the answer is yes and no. Which means AGPL is on the edge between
> >> free and non-free, as viewed by many people around Debian.
> >> I definitely want sympy to be on the safe side of the edge.
> >
> > So you say we can't use AGPL now, right?
>
> We can use any license that we agree upon.
>
> >> I think it is perfectly rational to protect against threats. Every
> >> protection comes with a price and considering the protection of LGPL
> >> and the price of it, I prefer BSD.
> >
> > Are you saying this as "Ondrej, the developer", "Ondrej, the manager" or
> > "Ondrej, the project leader"? And if the latter, does this mean SymPy
> > stays BSD?
>
> Ondrej as developer.
>
> >> So if you propose you want to fork sympy, make it LGPL, what do you
> >> mean to "hack your own solution"? What is your aim? Is it the same aim
> >> as sympy aim? If so, do you want to split our community and get some
> >> developers working on the LGPL version and some developers on the BSD
> >> version? Sure, if this is what you believe in, do it. But as I said
> >> many times, it would be much better for all of us if we could find
> >> common ground and work together, instead of against each other.
> >
> > My goal is not to split the community, or somehow otherwise achieve any
> > social result. My only goal is to have
> >
> > useful CAS tool for me myself for my research
>
> Excellent, I am glad to hear it.
>
> > I know it is better to merge early, merge often, but if I had no chance
> > to protect the result inside sympy, I'll need to protect it myself:
> >
> > If I'll need to enhace sympy to do some nontriviall things for me, I'll
> > just create a git branch 'kirr', commit my anhancements there, and will
> > periodically merge with main sympy. If I need more enhancements, I'll
> > commit on 'kirr' branch again and as time goes would merge with sympy.
> >
> > I would keep my repository on say repo.or.cz, so that I can always
> > access it, so either can anyone else - I don't mind it.
> >
> > I would even try (if you would not mind) to periodically send email to
> > sympy patches with "Ondrej, All, please consider pulling 'kirr' branch
> > from here, to recieve the follwing updates ..." (with the first patch
> > being "switch to LGPL")
>
> Kirr, isn't this exactly what you are fighting against? You first
> stated how you didn't like that your physics colleague took your code
> and didn't contribute anything back (I agree) and now you want to do
> exactly the same thing! Take sympy code, put more restrictions on it
> and then redistribute your changes, so that the original project
> cannot use it.
This are *different* things. My code is always available, on fair terms
from my point of view, and the code is always free, and ready for use --
for example you could use it in an BSD application which uses such
LGPL'ed sympy + other BSD library.
> Yes, BSD allows that, and yes, LGPL allows that too --- I can then
> take your LGPL changes, make your whole repository GPL and say --
> kirr, take these fixes, but you need to change to GPL. And let me say
> that I don't find such a behavior polite.
Yes, from some point of view that's impolite, but that what the license
allows, and that's life.
Besides that, a lot of current sympy code was contributed by me, so it's
not like I take someone other's work, but like I take my work + other's
work covered by permissive license (then why in the first place you used
such a permissive license?) and continue working on it on my own terms.
And yes, you can take my code, and enhance it and put into GPL, and I
think that's fair. What is also fair, is that you'll can't put my
modified code into proprietary product and ship it - you'll either have
to:
- redistribute your changes to my code under LGPL to your customer
- upgrade the license to GPL and distribute the whole thing to customer
(but in this case, you can't put one part into GPL and other part into
proprietary license - GPL disallows this)
So the code always stays free, not proprietary.
Sure, you can think of it like a "crazy" Kirr, but isn't this a possible
scenario with subs(Kirr, SomeCompany)? Only some companies would not use
LGPL and would not send merge request emails.
Do you see the difference?
> So we are back at what I am saying all the time ---- the license
> itself doesn't help against bad behavior. It's not about license, it's
> about the community.
Yes, it about the community, right.
The license is one force which could protect that community from one
kind of "abuse", but not from all kinds. I'm not saying changing the
license would make us all immediatelly happy, but that kind of abuse I'm
talking about is real, sooner or later, so we'd better plug it, and
start doing other, more pleasant things, e.g. developing sympy itself.
> > I'm not saying I'll have to do it -- first, existing SymPy could be
> > enough for my tasks (but until now it was not enough capable). Second - I
> > still believe we should and can make a consensus on the topic.
>
> I very strongly believe we should have only one project and work on it
> and we should choose a license that best fit into our atmosphere.
>
> Now let's wait for more developers and users to express their opinions
> and I hope we can agree on common interests and find a solution. If
> not, I'll make a decision which license my own releases are going to
> use. And currently I am clearly for staying with BSD.
I too strongly believe in cooperation, and that we should have just one
project. That's why I've put every effort to compete with sympycore and
make it irrelevant today.
Saying unpleasant words is a dirty work, but someone have to do it one
way or another, always.
My understanding is that through SymPy developers I'm not alone in my
views, though I'm far not sure.
I've tried to say it all -- LGPL gives:
o Protection for the development community and for SymPy -- it always
stays Free Software.
o Loyality for users -- they are not forced to use any particular
license for their software which uses SymPy.
To me this is the perfect and fair balance, and I hope I'm not alone.
--
Kirill
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