On Thu, 1 Apr 2004 09:02:32 +0200 "T. Ribbrock" <emgaron@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 31, 2004 at 06:55:43PM -0500, Richard Welty wrote:
> > technically, OpenBSD hasn't forked Apache (yet). they are simply maintaining
> > a late copy of 1.3.mumble.
> Yes, you're right - my choice of words was poor - thanks for pointing
> that out. Nonetheless, Theo refuses to accept anything in Apache that will
> be released under the new licence, whichwas the point I intended to make.
yes, and it's a policy i quite agree with.
this has been discussed intermittantly here, but the key point hasn't been
made in this forum that i can recall.
the trend towards "less free" licenses may have a potentially chilling effect
on distribution & packaging activities. if dozens and dozens of open source
projects start putting in seemingly innocent terms about things like "getting
permission" and "only installing official releases w/o patches" (two that
have come up in recent memory), it could become entirely unreasonable
to try and package up a distribution. Fedora Core 3 or 4 might never
come into being because it'd be too damn much work to comply with
all the license terms.
so these things that look like silly disputes on the face of them may have
deeper problems. best if this sort of thing got nipped in the bud now, and
the best way to do that is to refuse to use software when the license
terms take negative turns.
richard
--
Richard Welty rwelty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Averill Park Networking 518-573-7592
Java, PHP, PostgreSQL, Unix, Linux, IP Network Engineering, Security
