Re: Evolution copyright assignment: Storm in a teacup

[Carlos Perelló Marín <carlos gnome org>]

On Sat, 2004-08-07 at 12:48 +0100, Rui Miguel Seabra wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-08-07 at 13:35 +0200, Spider wrote:
> > 	Nothing here that goes against the GPL as I read it.
> 
> Nothing goes illegally against the GPL. Correct.
> 
> But the purpose of the GPL is to keep the software Free Software.
> 
> The purpose of Ximian/Novell's copyright assignment is to destroy that
> purpose. You have to sign it in order to become part of that community.
> 
> I say that is incompatible with being a gnome module because it creates
> division in the community, limiting (for nothing in return) who can
> contribute.


Well, I don't see it as a bad thing now, if we had other choices with
other groupware suite like evolution without this restriction, I will
vote by that other option, but that's not the case and we only have
evolution (a really good piece of software as you know). Novell/Ximian
has developed more than 90% of that code as GPL code I think you cannot
say that they are not giving you anything in return.

That's their compromise, they want your copyright to be able to create
nonfree releases of evolution (if they want/need it in the future) but
in return of that, they have evolution as free software under the GPL,
they give you all that code, graphics and release management as any
other free software project, and all that will remain always free. If
their contributions to evolution were a lower part of the patches, I
would be with you but this is not the case, they are developing a high
portion of evolution under GPL.

I agree with you that the best option is this module without copyright
assignment, but as you know it's a company, and they need to live, they
are funding a really high portion of the development and sorry, I cannot
see it as a bad thing (I know it's not ideal) because all us know that
Evolution would not exists as complete as it's now without that kind of
development.

So please, don't say that they ask your copyright without giving you
anything.

If tomorrow Novell decides to stop developing Evolution as a free source
project, yes, they will have your code in a propietary release but that
will be only a 5-10% of the code and you will have a 90% of their code
as free software and you will be able to compete with them with their
own code.

Cheers.

P.S.: The percentages are only a guess, if fact I suspect that they
developed more than 90% of the code.

> 
> Rui
> 
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-- 
Carlos Perelló Marín
Debian GNU/Linux Sid (PowerPC)
Linux Registered User #121232
mailto:carlos pemas net || mailto:carlos gnome org
http://carlos.pemas.net
Valencia - Spain