Re: SourceForge drifting (?)

[Sean /The RIMBoy/ <sean@rimboy.com>]

On Wed, 14 Nov 2001, Flood Randy Capt AFCA/TCAA wrote:

> OK, OK.  I didn't mean to start a flamewar here.  I just want to see
> other people's take on this.

Well, I've tried pointing this out and other concerns people should have,
but certain individuals continue to feel they won't be happy unless they
piss every person on a list off.  It's not your fault.

In short, what you've written below is as I understand the current
problems facing VA, SF, the SF developers, and to a certain extent SF
users.  

It is apparent that CmdrTaco is very unhappy with the current VA
situation.  I think they're finding out how little control they in fact
have over their baby.  I only bring this up because I think his comments
the other day are indicative of the problems at VA.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/12/1456219&mode=thread

Sean...

> Before I begin, I want to state that I do not have a lot of knowledge of
> this subject except what I read in the article (including VA's official
> responce.)  I am trying to check out if my impression of what it
> happening is accurate or not.  Please refrain from flaming me and let me
> know if I am percieving things correctly, or if I am missing something.
> 
> Let's consider the Sourceforge Project.  The article implies that the
> Sourceforge developers are taking a project that was presumably GPL'd
> (does anyone know for sure?) and writing new code for that that they are
> using internally but not releasing.  They are also talking about
> releasing a commercial product containing a mixture of GPL'd code and
> proprietary code.  What makes me nervous is that they are asking all the
> developers of the original GPL'd code to turn over their copywrights to
> VA Linux.  If VA Linux gets all the developers to turn over all of their
> code, then they can then release a proprietary product containing that
> code.  They can then distribute the entire Sourceforge product without
> releasing sourcecode to any of the modifications that they are making.
> In fact, they seem to have already made significant modifications for
> internal use without releasing the code.  I think that this is allowed
> by the GPL.
> 
> The potential problem with this is that the developers were not informed
> that they were turning over their code (without compensation)so that it
> could be included in a commercial project for which VA Linux will
> profit.  They contributed their code with the understanding that it
> would remain Free.  Their reasoning (presumably) behind turining over
> the copywright to their code to the maintainer was so that if someone
> tried to violate the GPL, then VA Linux could sue them to ensure that
> the code remained Free.  Instead, the article implies that VA Linux will
> extend thier code and sell it commercially without distributing the
> source code of their extensions.
> 
> The implication is that if you intend to write code for Free software,
> you might wish to refuse to turn copywright over to the maintainer.
> Because if the maintainer gets all the copywrights, there is nothing to
> stop him/her from selling the whole thing to Microsoft.
> 
> I might be totally wrong about this.  I am throwing these ideas out
> there because I want to make sure I understand what they are doing
> correctly.           

-- 
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	--Paul Simon
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