[openbeos] Re: [Glasselevator-talk] Re: Glasselevator-talk digest, Vol 1 #3 - 3 msgs (themes and other apps)...

  • From: "Ithamar R. Adema" <ithamar@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 14:23:35 +0100

>Not to sound like an ass, but OSS and Control are mutually exclusive 
terms.

I do not agree :)

>Once you place that code under an OpenSource license, it's no longer 
under
>your control.  It's under the control of the community that uses it.  
If you
>have a 'look and feel' but another dev wants something different, they
>simply hack apart your pretty and time consuming UI elements, throw 
them on
>the floor and replace them with their own.

The source is only open to people with write-access to your CVS, which 
contains the "main" source of the project. Anyone who goes about 
distributing modified versions is free to do so, but that will not 
change the code in CVS :) Whatever ends up in CVS is what I mean with 
"controlled" source, controlled by the people who develop it, and have 
access.

>And for your efforts you might
>get a note in the README, and that assumes you release under a GPL 
variant
>the enforces that. 

This has nothing to do with the GPL, but ok. 

>Given all of that, and the state of how badly the OSS licenses are 
actually
>adhered to.  Go ask the author of Fink, or a number of other OSS 
authors
>about the efforts required to pursue people that abuse OSS and the GPL
>variants.  I'm sorry but if you think you can control OSS code, you 
are
>delusional.  You can 'guide' but not control.

Still, this means other people use our code to generate something new, 
which is ok, as long as it isn't entered into the main OpenBeOS CVS 
without appropriate consensus.

I know that our current setup allowes for big messes to be created, but 
that's why I advocated some kind of release doc to be written quite 
some time ago. This should include control over code changes after a 
release have been made. I'm thinking about something close to how OSS 
projects like AbiWord, gcc, and FreeType manage their development 
stuff.

BeUnited can do as they wish regarding _their_ copy of the OBOS code 
and binaries, but the OBOS project should decide themselfs what goes 
into the OBOS CVS, otherwise we'll end up as a set of coders working 
for BeUnited and not getting payed, which is not what I want.

If _anyone_ wants to do things differently then the OBOS project 
itself, feel free to grab the code and change it, and keep a branch of 
your own code in a CVS tree, just stay away from our baseline :-)

Regards,

Ithamar.

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