RE: Open Letter to Octave Community

[Carmine Napolitano]

Hi Judd,

Thanks for the comments.  I'm trying to make sure I understand your main
questions here so we can address them definitively:

1)  " Do the restrictions of the GPL apply to
all uses of submitted work *by*Equalis*?"

Are you asking if Equalis is willing to have its submitted work licensed
under GPL?  For example, if we make code contributions to Octave via our
site (ie like in a forum or group) are we willing to have them governed by
GPL?

2)  "Does Equalis have the legal
right (whether or not it is your intention to exercise this right) to
relicense GPL code that is submitted by users?"

Are you asking whether Equalis claims the right to relicense GPL code
submitted by other users under some other license other than GPL?  

Might be most helpful by giving a simple use case for each so we can be
clear about your concerns.

Regards,
Carmine
-----Original Message-----
From: Judd Storrs [mailto:address@hidden 
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 10:35 AM
To: Carmine Napolitano
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: Open Letter to Octave Community

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 6:15 PM, Carmine Napolitano <address@hidden>
wrote:
> 1) We are
> absolutely committed to allowing open source communities to retain all
> rights embodied in the license agreements under which they are
distributed.

The accusation is that the TOS reserves additional rights for Equalis
beyond what the community has. Do the restrictions of the GPL apply to
all uses of submitted work *by*Equalis*? I will not consider sharing
any of me personal information with you in order to register for an
Equalis account before this is answered (actually, I also think it is
ridiculous to require registration in order to even view the content
of the site and may still chose not to register. Even requiring
registration to download code violates the GPL, if I recall
correctly--registration must be optional). Does Equalis have the legal
right (whether or not it is your intention to exercise this right) to
relicense GPL code that is submitted by users? If not, please point me
to relevant paragraphs of the Terms of Service. Or perhaps you could
ask the FSF to evaluate and endorse your TOS. I will defer to them.

> As we all know, some "open source" licenses are more open than others.

All open source licenses must conform to the open source definition
and are all equally "open". Likewise, all free software conforms to
the Free Software Foundation's free software definition. Some licenses
are more permissive than others but that has nothing to do with
openness.


--judd