This is not the place to conduct a GPL-vs.-everything-else flamewar. These messages are beginning to have nothing whatsoever to do with Zope. This is a list about Zope. If the GPL stuff relates in a manner not so tangetial to Zope, fine. But this particular thread is beginning to turn into a flamewar. If you care to argue the issues underlying this, please take it to an appropriate newsgroup. ----- Original Message ----- From: <jim@cosource.com> To: <zope@zope.org> Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2000 2:51 PM Subject: Re: [Zope] Zope and the GPL poison pill
Hey, Nils, I've got news for you. I've written 3 separate posts now which were long and thoughtful, which quoted from the GPL, and which explained to you and the rest of the community how you could deliver a proprietary solution to a client which relied on a GPL'd object in zope.
But, I've deleted all three rather than send them. Why? Because, first, I don't want to be the person who posted a cook-book recipie for circumventing the intent of someone's license. Other people on this list have alluded to how to do it, that's already plenty. Second, I find the people who stand to benefit the most from such an explanation to be overwhelmingly rude and hostile towards any suggestion that each developer have the right to select their own distribution terms, and when given the choice between pissing off some developers who release GPL'd code to help some ingrates figure out workarounds OR letting the ingrates continue to believe their utterly outrageous misinterpretations of the GPL, I'll choose the second.
But to answer your post specifically, fine, Guido wants you to take his code and turn it into commercial products. So do a number of other people.
Now, you need to come up with a reason for me why that means EVERYONE should conduct themselves that way. That's what's being proposed here: that no one ever write zope products and release them under the GPL.
Remember, no one is saying Zope should be GPL'd. Some are saying they'd like to distribute their modules and add-ons under the GPL. So, one side of the debate says "no, no one should use the GPL for any code that will run on a zope machine" and the other says "everyone should be free to select the license that they like best for the code that they distribute."
Why does this debate even occupy anyone's time? It seems such a simple question. If someone posts a module that is GPL'd either a) use it and accept that that entails or b) don't use it, re-write it, whatever. I can't understand why there's a c) adopt as some sort of Zope-Community-Law that Thy Shalt Not Copyleft Things. Again, it only makes sense if you think people will STILL write the code but just release it under the more liberal license. I submit that that's not true.
If I was advocating the complete and total re-licensing of everything on zope.org under the GPL, yes, you'd have a point, Guido and others clearly are happy to let their code become parts of commercial products. But what I advocate respects their wishes, and further respects other peoples' wishes too: people with a different viewpoint. Each consultant out there can pick and choose among the code available and if they want to shun GPL'd modules, great. That's a far better way to go then telling people not to write them in the first place, thank you very much.
jim
On Wed, 13 Sep 2000, Nils Kassube wrote:
Jim Hebert wrote:
Look, I'm the last person on earth to say the GPL is perfect, or is the one true license, or anything else. I've heard a number of GOOD arguments in a number of venues about why the GPL may not be the best choice in that setting.
From:
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2000-09-07-011-21-OS-CY-SW
--cut-- LT: From your viewpoint, should the differences between your licenses and the GPL attract or deter developers?
GVR: Both. It may deter GPL hardliners (but there seem to be few of these in the Python world). But it attracts developers from the proprietary world like I mentioned above. Many of these "proprietary" companies are major contributors to Python and other open source products. For example the new Unicode support and regular expression engine, as well as several existing core library modules, were contributed by people who also develop proprietary Python software --cut--
But this thread boils down to a bunch of people who want to sell a solution which includes work other than their own, receive all the money from the sale, bar the client from getting other 3rd parties to help them improve what they paid for, and further have a legal monopoly on distributing that solution to any additional people.
Looks like these people displaying "utter bald-faced greed and ingratitude" by developing proprietary software based on open source products are important to Guido van Rossum.
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