Re: Software relicensing, how is it done ?

["Tristan Van Berkom" <tvb gnome org>]

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 7:37 AM, Dave Neary <dneary gnome org> wrote:
> Linus decided that Bitkeeper was fine for his needs, and started using
> it and publishing his repository in a public Bitkeeper repository.
> Bitkeeper guy (Larry McVoy) gave free copies of the client to free
> software developers.
[...]

Thankyou Dave that was a very insightful read for me, as far as I can
see the risks at hand involve a hypothetical situation where the community
gets addicted to a non-free extension of Glade, my relicensing of Glade
does not go beyond LGPL, and to keep us in check, I definatly invite
more freedom lovers to contribute and spread the ownership of authorial
copyright thinner ;-)

I was at first ambivalent about the licensing of the plugins for libgladeui
use as a Gtk+ interface designer (soon libgladeui will not have a runtime
dependency on gtk+ at all), after discussing it further with my main
Glade colleague Juan; I am confidant that we also want them LGPL.

Making non-free extensions of Glade possible does not mean that free
Glade will not exist. I welcome the competition firstly, and Juan
and I still strongly agree that allowing non-free extensions of Glade
will help to attract a larger user base to Gtk+, which consists of
free and proprietary softwares alike.

I am not here to deny anyone free use of Glade, that would include
any company who might need to write a proper sdk for their GNU/Linux
based embedded/handheld/realtime/insert-flavour-here platform.

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 2:41 PM, Richard M. Stallman <rms gnu org> wrote:
> Not to metion the fact that merely using the non-free program
> sends the message that non-free software is ok.
[...]

Commercial software endevours as it stands are already high-risk affairs,
we need people to build cathedrals out of our bazaar, these are
valuable endevours that help alot with innovation and computing on
a whole, cathedrals that dont have a proper bazaar as their foundation
will come crashing down with security holes, careless mistakes and
downright lack of public scrutiny (we've all seen it before).

This is a lesson that commercial vendors will have to learn the
hard way, and if free software is anywhere near as superiour as
I believe it to be, commercial vendor's success will inevitably
be measured by their willingness to cooperate (give and take) with
the bazaar that is free software. When such an endevour is
actually successful, realistically they only have a year or two
until someone has come up with a free solution for their project,
which is a fair lapse of time if you ask me, not more, not less.
So I would have to thank them for coming up with something that
we havent already thought of ourselves, and even prototyping it
for us in a product.

If you really think that selling any software is not OK,
to the point of which using any proprietary software sends
a bad message, I can only say dont use proprietary software
at all, I wont stand in the way of your freedom in a consumers
market to use a free or proprietary tool for your own purposes.

Regards,
                   -Tristan