Re: Classpath future?

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi,

On Thu, Jul 12, 2001 at 03:01:18PM -0400, Etienne M. Gagnon wrote:
> 
> I have many months ago sent a few patches on this list.  These were 
> probably small enough not to require paperwork, but nothing happened. 
Oops. Sorry, we have dropped the ball then.
Could you please resent them (or give me the month you sent them so I
can look them up in the archives). Note that the new Savannah setup has
a patch manager that we should use and that hopefully prevents patches
from being dropped. <http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/classpath>

> This is not how the Classpath should continue to operate, if it wants to 
> lead the development of these class libraries.  A fork of the project 
> could very easily similarly to XEmacs in respect of Emacs (e.g., import 
> all of the official patches into the rogue repository).  But this would 
> be most unfortunate.  The problem is that it might end up that way if 
> contributions can't get more easily in Classpath!  We should really 
> solve the contribution issue, and soon.
You are right that Classpath could be more responsive. But I do hope that
people that want to make Classpath better will work with the project
and not fork it. Forking costs a lot of energy and most forks do not
last very long. The people currently working on Classpath may not be
the most quick to respond, but they have been working on this project
for years so you can be assured that they will be around in a couple
of years.

Also note that there seem to be three/four contribution issues for you.
1) The Classpath maintainers are not responsive enough
2) The copyright assignment issue
2a) Copyright assignment is a slow process
2b) Losing copyright/attribution when assigning
3) The current Classpath license

I hope we can solve 1 by giving an apology, try to be more responsive
and maybe use the patch manager on Savannah.
We should look at 2a, but I have the feeling that this is not always the
case. We have to find out why some individuals have to wait such a long
time. 2b seems a non-issue to me, except when you do not trust the FSF.
Maybe I do not understand your problem clearly enough but the assignment
papers give you the right the do with your own code whatever you want,
even relicense it yourself under other conditions.
Problem 3 shall only be solved if it is a clear win for the project
and the bigger GNU project.

I really do hope that we can convince you to help the Classpath project.

Cheers,

Mark
-- 
Stuff to read:
    <http://www.toad.com/gnu/whatswrong.html>
  What's Wrong with Copy Protection, by John Gilmore