Re: [Tim Wilkinson <tim@transvirtual.com>] [ANNOUCEMENT] Kaffe: The future

[Russell Nelson <nelson crynwr com>]

Mark Galassi writes:
 > 
 >     Vincent> This new licence reminds me pretty much of what cygnus
 >     Vincent> did about 6 months ago when they tried to change the
 >     Vincent> gnu-win32 licence.
 > 
 >     Vincent> It's worth noting that we (ie: the Free Software
 >     Vincent> community) shouted loud enough so they changed their mind
 >     Vincent> and gnu-win32 is still free. Maybe it can also work with
 >     Vincent> kaffe. _(;
 > 
 > But keep in mind that a lot of the objection to the new license also
 > came from *within* Cygnus: most of us are still free software fanatics
 > :-)
 > 
 > But we should definitely write to these people telling them to be
 > careful of stupid licensing ideas.  There are better ways of getting
 > even with people who have been unkind to them in the past.
 > 
 > The GPL could actually work very well for them: they could distribute
 > software under the GPL, and if they find some large company that wants
 > to distribute Kaffe without the hassle of distributing source, they
 > could offer Kaffe to them under separate terms.  Everybody wins in
 > that kind of scenario: the big customer gets the (rather foolish) "no
 > source warm fuzzy", and we still get source.

I license the Crynwr packet drivers in proprietary manners.  Once, and
only once, did I get a customer who licensed the packet drivers in
that manner -- to remove their obligation to distribute source to
unaggregated code.  Much more often they wish to include packet driver 
source into a proprietary program.

Having said that, if I were going to do it all over again, I would use 
a Ghostscript-type license.  I would be a millionaire, and would be
able to work on freed software all day long, with no need to scrape
and scratch for an income.  So no, I can't condemn them for using the
license they have.

-- 
-russ <nelson@crynwr.com>  http://web.crynwr.com/~nelson
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