Re: Evolution copyright assignment: Storm in a teacup

[Thomas Vander Stichele <thomas apestaart org>]

Hi,

> I've said it more than once. It's immoral to pretend to be a Free
> Software project just to be able to take Free Software code into
> proprietary software.

You presume too much.  The evolution hackers aren't pretending to be a
free software project, they are.  Their main goal is not to take free
software into proprietary software, their goal seems to be to make the
best free software mailing client available.  You attribute goals to
them without knowing the first thing about their goals (and neither do
I, but that's another matter).

You are trapped into a duality problem, believing that software that can
be licensed under a proprietary license cannot be free.  If this would
be the case, the GPL would state so.  It does not.

This is the crux of your problem.  The GPL's moral implication is that
all software should be free.  I'm sure you agree on that.  That's what
the GPL is trying to achieve.

In a world where software is either A or B, you'd be right.  In such a
world, being free would equal to "not being under a non-free license". 
In the real world outside of your head where we all live, however, it is
perfectly fine for software to be under different licenses.

If you really want a license that says that it should never be under any
other license than a free one, you'll have to write such a license.  If
the GPL really meant to cover this case, it would have said so.  I don't
believe that the GPL was written by people who "forgot" about copyright.

If you have links to actual verifiable statements on what you call the
morality of the GPL, and if you believe that the GPL really did want to
say "it should never be under any other license than free", then back
that up.

As you yourself said, you are not Richard Stallman.  Richard is free to
comment on this thread as well.  I personally am interested in what the
GPL was trying to say, and have read a lot on the topic.  I do not
believe your interpretation of the morality of the GPL is correct.  I'm
pretty sure that the people who chose the GPL for the license of
Evolution didn't agree with you either.  What makes you correct in your
interpretation of the GPL, and us wrong ? Feel free to convince us.

Take another example - libmad, a GPL decoding library for mp3, is GPL. 
You can get a license under something other than the GPL.  Is that
morally wrong ? Only in your personal interpretation of the GPL,
apparently.  You keep asserting it is immoral, but you'll have to accept
sooner or later that this is a personal opinion.

In fact, most people will say that it is NOT immoral at all.  People who
write code are free to do with it what they want.

Here are the options for parties involved:
- Evolution hackers have written Evolution and released it as GPL.  The
company paying for it has allowed this to happen, giving us a free
software mailing client.  The company is free to choose, as a copyright
holder, to license this code under other licenses as well.

- You as a possible contributing developer (you're not, but let's assume
you are) have a choice.
  - change some stuff in evolution, and just release your patch or your
personal copy of evolution.  The first of these two is your moral and
legal obligation under the GPL in case you choose to release the second
as a binary.

  - submit it to evolution without signing the copyright.  They will
probably refuse, as they have a moral right to do so.

 - assign the copyright to Evolution.  Your patch will go in, you are
still allowed to at any point put that patch in your own personal copy
of evolution, and even still distribute that.  Your patch will also be
in some future free software released version of Evo.

Thomas

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