Re: What is GNOME office?

[Michael Meeks <michael helixcode com>]

Hi Alan,

On Thu, 16 Nov 2000, Alan Cox wrote:
> And a non pure GPL code which requires you give sun right to misuse
> your contributions is not going to get contribution from many hackers.

        Well; trust me to swim against the tide again; but I see no reason
to believe that Sun has any more 'right' to misuse your contributions than
if the project was LGPLd. I have assigned copyright before when I do small
ammounts of work on a project that someone else has invested a massive
amount of time in, and I look forward to doing so again when I work on OO.

> Certainly if the Gnome foundation is going to tell hackers to work on
> code that Sun require you dual license in a non free way to them

        A touch of the sun ? not in Wales though :-) I do not intend to
start a flameware, but I am more interested in the fact that OO is
available fully under the [L]GPL than what the copyright is. I think you
are confusing freedom with copyright. All the freedoms that are so
important are granted by the OO license.

        To worry that Sun could close their source again, or that others
would not release their enhancements is to show a lack of faith in the  
efficacy of Free software over propriatory developement I think. [ quite
apart from the apalling publicity this would give such a malefactor ].  

> I believe we should stop referring to it as a free software project
> and should disassociate from the FSF so that the truely free KDE   
> project can instead be endorsed by them

        Is that so; is it the case that all of the KDE is available under
a free GPL / LGPL license with no extra strings attached ?

        Regards,

                Michael.

-- 
 mmeeks gnu org  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot