Re: Module proposal: Empathy for GNOME 2.24

[Martin Soto <soto informatik uni-kl de>]

Hello Martyn,

On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 10:37 +0000, Martyn Russell wrote:
> Patryk Zawadzki wrote:
...
> > So you are basically saying "I'm -1 because of relicensing problems
> > that I'm causing myself?" 
> 
> Yes, effectively.
> 
> As for "relicensing problems that I'm causing myself", I am FULLY at
> liberty to do this. It is/was my free time, my decision to use this
> license and my decision to maintain this license for *my contributions*.
> It is not ultimately down to just me either, I did not write this
> project completely on my own remember.

Of course, as a code author you are free to decide how to license your
code, so, in my personal opinion, the only appropriate behavior anyone
can have towards you in this respect is to thank you for your generous
contribution of this code under a free license such as the GPL.

On the other hand, I must agree with Patryk in that you are using this
discussion, which is an official discussion leading to module selection
for Gnome 2.24, to present a formal objection that happens to be valid
(at least to a large extent) because of your own actions. Once again, I
won't deny your right to keep your code as GPL for whatever personal or
business reasons you may have, but saying that this is a reason not to
accept Empathy as part of Gnome sounds like a pretty weak argument
coming from you, and suggests a deliberate attempt to obstruct Empathy's
acceptance.

> I am merely pointing out where licensing is currently incorrectly stated
> (which others asked for in this thread) and also that the problem is not
> JUST about relicensing libempathy-gtk, but also libempathy.
> 
> > Please point the rest of us to the
> > discussion where Imendio/Gossip staff gives their reasons against
> > LGPL.
> 
> Google is your friend :)
> 
> This was partly discussed on IRC with Xavier IIRC and also covered here:
> 
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2007-September/msg00554.html

I see that many people in the referenced thread actually agreed with
having Empathy in Gnome (desktop, not platform) under a GPL license.
What are the actual arguments against doing this?

Thanks,

M. S.