Re: testing before a release

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi Etienne,

I do appreciate your input but I always find it hard to respond correctly
to your messages. You seem to expect a lot from a couple of simple volunteers
on this project. Last time I tried to discuss these issues with you my
responses made you decide to fork the project. I will try to give a better
response this time. 

On Wed, Nov 07, 2001 at 10:38:56AM -0500, Etienne M. Gagnon wrote:
> 
> I am surprized to see the direction that this licensing discussion is 
> taking.

Then you must not have been following the discussion on the mailinglist.
Nobody seems to be pleassed about all the miscommunication and the
way we are now forced to deal with it. But from reading the list you
could have seen one of these solutions coming.

> No body has yet addressed the CURRENT PROBLEM of the license of 
> non-AWT code.

That is because I think we have bigger problems at the moment.
And we wanted to use the same license as the GNU Compiler Collection
has been using for a long time. Your observation has not been forgotten
and if you have been following the libgcj (address@hidden) mailinglist
you would have noticed that a lot of people would like to see a standard
name to refer to the license we (and a couple of other GNU projects) are
currently using. That would make it easier to analyse and explain it.
 
> As for the AWT, you can go with the plain GPL if you want, but this is, in 
> my humble opinion, a dead-end.  There's already other free software projects 
> under licenses like the LGPL that provide things like "GTK" wrappers for 
> Java.  (See the following project: http://java-gnome.sourceforge.net ).  
> Such code could easily serve as the basis to rewrite a new AWT under a much 
> kinder license for applications.

I agree with you on this. There is also the Wonka AWT project Rudolph.
<http://wonka.acunia.com/intro.html#rudolph>

> I have serious reserves on an interpretation of the GPL that would say that 
> it is ok to run a graphical proprietary application over a GPL'ed AWT.  I 
> also have the concern that the GPL on the AWT would impose itself on the 
> underlying VM, which in turn would impose the GPL on linked JNI modules.  

I think your analysis of the situation is correct.
I will write a LICENSING.README document explaining how I think the
different licenses used in GNU Classpath effect derived works.
I will post that document to the mailinglist and to RMS so we can have a
real discussion about it.

> We all know that writing a complete class library for Java is a major 
> undertaking; I don't see why you want to do the GNU project 
> (Classpath/libgcj) in a way that will cause duplicate efforts, because of 
> unacceptable licenses, and code contribution policies (copyright 
> assignment).

Working on a GNU project is a challenge I agree with that :)

> As usual, you can continue to ignore my suggestions; I'm have now got used 
> to it.

This is really unfair! Last time we discussed these kind of things you
decided after a couple of hours to fork the project and not invest any
more time in the GNU Classpath project. You have every right to make
that decission if you think that your time can be spend more efficiently
then discussing with us. And I do agree that it sometimes takes weeks 
before these kinds of issues are completely worked out (and this time it
has taken much, much to much time). But we are certainly not ignoring your
input. We might not always have the same priorities as you have. And nobody
has enough time to do all the things we would like to do for the project.
But we do listen to your input!

> Some of your leaders have their (partly hidden) political/commercial 
> agendas.  This is why there's such a license mess.  Nobody cared about the 
> LGPL license for Classpath before the libgcj merge.  To solve the "linking" 
> problem, they went with GPL + exception, but a careful inspection of it tell 
> you that it is a permission to reuse contributed code without any sourc-code 
> redistribution obkigation (very good for companies [I could say names here] 
> to make money $$$ selling embedded stuff that was developped by others).

A lot of this is really just miscommunication. Some of it clearly dating
back to the beginning of the project. This is indeed sad and we must
clear it all up. But I don't think anybody has really evil plans.
Call me naive. But please say names if you like. It is always good to get
things in the clear if you think people are not honest about their actions.
 
> A note about copyright assignment: You know, one reason the Linux kernel is 
> so successful is that: even Linus CANNOT sell the code under a proprietary 
> license, because HE IS NOT the sole copyright holder.  Because of this, the 
> Linux kernel is de-facto a really Free piece of code. Nobody single person 
> can take a proprietary advantage of it, unless ALL contributors agree.

If you assign your copyright to the FSF you do so by signing a contract
that says to you have everyright to use the code you contribute as you like
(so you are still a -co-owner of the parts you write). And the FSF agrees
to never distribute your work without giving the general public the right to
freely run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.
So in practice a GNU project will also always stay Free as soon as anybody
assigns the copyright to the FSF.

Cheers,

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