Re: [Savannah-hackers] Re: [Gforge-devel] gforge

[Dan Kuykendall]

I just want to jump in an defend Tim on this a bit. I have seen this 
many times in the Free Software world, where some people will jump into 
full attack mode WAY to quickly about license issues.
We should always assume that these licensing issues are an oversight or 
misunderstanding. We should always start by contacting the author and 
seeing what it is that we can do to help resolve the issue, in as 
friendly a manner as possible. I have seen this with companies that sell 
versions of phpGroupWare. Some of my team has jumped down their throats 
and this is simply the wrong way to handle these situations. It only 
makes us look like extremists when there is no reason to be.

In Tims case I would assume, based on what I know of him, that he is 
working on gForge for the pure enjoyment of it. He would also work to 
stay in license complaince, but if we start bashing him and taking away 
the fun of such a project then it could diminish the great work he is 
doing. So even if he doesnt want to spend the time to cut and paste the 
license text into each file, then one of us should volunteer to do it 
for him. In fact I will put myself up for the task, even tho I am pretty 
busy with everything else Im doing. I think gForge, and Tims work is at 
least worth such a small contribution to making things easier for him.

So lets remember that we are all working on the same team. We can same 
our venom on the Microsofts of the world.

Dan

Tim Perdue wrote:
> Matheiu, please see the attached message at the bottom. 
> address@hidden was contacted about this 6-7 weeks ago with no response.
>
> As far as CVS, we have no problem moving it off of savannah if it's a 
> problem.
>
> Tim
>
>
> Mathieu Roy wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > In almost all files I checked in your project CVS, correct
> > licensing/copyright information is lacking.
> >
> > These informations are very important and you was told at registration
> > to take care about it.
> > Please, conform to our policy or we would be forced to deactivate your
> > project.
> > (See "How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs" in the GPL)
> >
> >
> > Also, would you like to state the meaning of the following?
> >
> >  *  user.php - allows non-free software to be linked safely to GForge
> >  *
> >  *  THIS FILE IS RELEASED UNDER THE LGPL
> >  *
> >  *  ANY MODIFICATIONS MUST BE ALSO RELEASED UNDER LGPL
> >
> > Understand that until you completely rewrite gforge in LGPL, linking
> > proprietary software to gforge is a serious license violation.
> > Anyway, this statement is confusing, please replace it with the text
> > proposed in the LGPL.
> >
> >
> > Regards,
>
> 12/22/2002 address@hidden message
>
> ---------------------------------------
>
> Can anyone at FSF advise us on how best to handle "mixed copyright" GPL 
> software? GForge is a fork of SourceForge, which was copyright VA Linux, 
> and the new code is largely copyrighted by myself.
>
> Tim
>
>
> Tim Perdue <address@hidden> writes:
>
>  > Thanks. Is there anyone who could advise us on the "Mixed copyright"
>  > issue? Of course, much of the code is Copyright VA Linux, but I am
>  > not granting them copyright to all of the new material that has been
>  > rewritten/added.
>
>
> [...]
>
> <address@hidden> should be able to resolve licensing issues.
>
> - --
> Hugo Gayosso
>
>
>
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