lucky13
Group: Members
Posts: 1478
Joined: Feb. 2007 |
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Posted: June 19 2008,22:59 |
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| Quote | | Being pragmatic here, it's generally better just to respect the wishes of the author than risk encouraging him or her to put all or part of their code under some awful license? |
What's the difference between the GPL -- as it's written -- and what he's imposing on top of that? What he's offering is NOT the GPL but GPL with strings and conditions (like his name and copyright appearing when things he DIDN'T write are invoked) that aren't his to make.
edited and amended...
| Quote | | The problem with doing a fork is someone with the appropriate skills then has to maintain it. Who is that going to be? |
Since florian effected and compiled the changed configuration, it seems he's up to the task. If he's interested, of course.
| Quote | | It could (?) be that the GPL does not adequately reflect John Murga's wishes for his code. |
This was a point I raised a couple times yesterday only to be met with Murga's derision and ad hominem attacks. If he wishes more control over it, he should *NOT* have chosen GPL because it is not a license that gives the developer full control over how the source is compiled or used. As long as it's GPL, we have the right -- you and I -- to compile it as *we* see fit and to redistribute it with proper attribution and availability of sources.
The only question here is whether the attributions in the recompiled sources are adequate. The solution isn't what he wants right now but what he wanted at the time he made the code available. He doesn't get to move the goalposts now. He was okay with DSL's previous use which did NOT put his name out in every invocation of the parts of the sum that constitute "murgalua." That's why I asked several times about that yesterday and again today.
Notice there was no answer to that. But plenty of BS about reading comprehension, developers being "dumb" and "molesting" and "butchering" his project.
I complained in the 4.3 (iirc) thread about the muddled verbiage that constituted his compiler "license" (if you can call it that) and asked questions about the issue of licensing because after reading his site and through his source tarball I was left with the impression he hadn't given it enough thought, or sought enough advice, to have anything more coherent than what he had in the tarball. Given his posts here and elsewhere, I now understand the source of said incoherence.
That doesn't change the fact that he chose the GPL for his bindings. Doing that gave DSL both rights and responsibilities. His allegations are that DSL isn't living up to those responsibilities. It's been demonstrated, though, that DSL didn't change any code. DSL merely didn't configure it the way he does. No different than if you're compiling vim and configure with --disable-nls and --with-gui=none. Does Bram Moolenaar call it "molesting" or "butchering" when users configure and compile to suit their needs?
I have to wonder if it's really in DSL's interests to use something which the author implies "his permission" was given or even needed when the GPL doesn't restrict use of code like that so long as the rest of the rules are followed. He cannot have it both ways. He can't offer the code under GPL and then demand absolute control over how it's compiled.
We're better off without him. If that means not using his code at all, so be it. If it means forking -- which is allowed under GPL because of situations like this -- then we should do that and use the GPL'ed parts as we see fit. If it means finding alternatives, we can do that. But we should not, as a matter of principle, exchange the freedom he explicitly gave users when he licensed under GPL for any control beyond the terms of the GPL. That means we should NOT give him credit when things he didn't even write are invoked and we should NOT have to meet new demands that weren't required when DSL "had his permission."
I know it's not my decision to make. You can see what it would be if it were. Like anyone else here, I use and support DSL because it serves my needs. I'm here because I want to help make DSL better, not to be divisive or to ruffle feathers. I'm also not here to give up any rights afforded me by particular licenses, and I don't want others giving up those rights in my interest. I respect anyone who thinks differently about the issues I've raised. But I won't be silent while others are doing things that can or will affect us in ways we won't want somewhere down the road.
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"It felt kind of like having a pitbull terrier on my rear end."
-- meo (copyright(c)2008, all rights reserved)
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