Re: Evolution copyright assignment: Storm in a teacup



On Fri, 2004-08-06 at 11:28 -0700, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> There are two major points to this discussion, and I'd like to tentatively
> put my foot down on at least one of them (but probably both), because there
> is a lot of really off-the-planet discussion going on here.

Or too much trusting, or bad intentions. I'm sorry for being so blunt.

> Evolution Specific
> ==================
> 
> The first issue is whether we accept copyright assignment for Evolution (in
> particular) as an officially blessed member of the Desktop release. So far,
> the major concern here is that Novell (and previously, Ximian) reserves the
> right to make the software available under other (non-Free) licensing terms.
> Quoting from the copyright assignment agreement:
> 
>   5. Novell will make the Assigned Contributions available under an
>   agreement approved by the OSI (Open Source Initiative), and may also make
>   the Assigned Contributions available under other license terms.
> 
> That means that external contributions WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE UNDER A FREE
> LICENSE. It doesn't say "in perpetuity", which is interesting, and I'd have
> to ask a lawyer what that implies.

No it doesn't. You're lying "in our faces" because I don't believe an
australian makes such a bad english interpretation.

It's supposed to be GPL, not GPL, or anything else.

> If any individual has a moral objection to giving Novell the right to make
> the software available under non-Free licenses then that person is FREE TO
> NOT SIGN THE AGREEMENT. End of story. At no time will contributions be
> unavailable under a Free license, Novell has specifically called that out in
> their agreement. This is not complicated at all.

So you consider acceptable to include as an official module one with a
licensing scheme created with the purpose of circunventing the GPL?

I think this has to change.
That part must go or suffer the punishment of not being included.

This is my opinion. I would love to see evolution inside GNOME, but not
this way. Not at any cost.

Rui

-- 
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?

Please AVOID sending me WORD, EXCEL or POWERPOINT attachments.
See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part



[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Thread Index] [Date Index] [Author Index]