[openbeos] Re: Openness

  • From: "Hugo Santos" <hugosantos@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 15:43:06 +0100

Hey Axel,

On 5/14/07, Axel Dörfler <axeld@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
1) the fact that most work was done by few people surely has many
reasons and IMO cannot be used to support your argument

 I believe it influences the amount of people that could approach the
project as contributors.

2) who would expect to have a say in a large project from the day on he
decides to contribute to that project? It cannot work this way.

 I didn't say that. What i said is that it should be clear how people
may eventually get involved in the decision making process. It is not
clear now, and the group is closed. You mention that people should ask
to enter the admin team, Michael said that people do not ask, get
invited. So it seems to me it is not clear at all.

3) we still have mostly the same people because they are committed to
the success of Haiku - that's not a disadvantage.

 Right, i'm not saying that people should leave, i was pointing at
the fact that the developer count hasn't grown.

Trust is hard to measure. It obviously plays a role in selecting the
members of the admin group, but trust (in your commitment) will come
automatically when you're a long term contributor. It's not even that
everyone in the current admin group was invited; some just asked, and
that's probably the best way to actually get into the group.

 You mention the trust the project has on you, not the trust onst
must have on the project's admin team, which my point was all about.

No sorry, you missed the point of what the distribution guidelines are
about: the code is free, and its license hasn't changed. Only the use
of the name "Haiku" (and other *trademarks*) is restricted by this
guideline.

 By the way, i'm not putting into question the decision regarding
distributions, i believe there should only be a single distribution,
however this is a clear example of the "executive branch" of the admin
team getting into force. Im not a lawyer, but i believe this
distribution "guidelines" indirectly affect the code as well. Parts
which include trademarks will not really be licensed under the MIT
license. The MIT license states:

  "Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files
(the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction
including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge,
publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software
(...)"

 Note "without restriction". This is not the case if you say that
"you can't use this file as it is because it uses Haiku's trademark".
In fact, not using Haiku's name as endorsement sounds a bit like the
BSD's License 4th clause:

 "Neither the name of the <ORGANIZATION> nor the names of its
contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from
this software without specific prior written permission."

 Hugo

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