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List:       ruby-talk
Subject:    Re: GUI With Ruby
From:       Chad Perrin <perrin () apotheon ! com>
Date:       2007-03-15 3:14:52
Message-ID: 20070315031412.GB8645 () apotheon ! com
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On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 11:45:31AM +0900, Bill Kelly wrote:
> From: "Chad Perrin" <perrin@apotheon.com>
> >On Wed, Mar 14, 2007 at 10:22:30PM +0900, Eleanor McHugh wrote:
> >>
> >>What this all boils down to at core is this: both BSD and GPL folks  
> >>are good, decent people. BSD folks like to give gifts to the  
> >>individual developer whilst GPL folks prefer to give their gifts to  
> >>the community of end-users - without the former the world would have  
> >>a lot fewer clever developers, and without the latter we'd all be  
> >>stuck with proprietary tools of dubious provenance.
> >
> >I don't entirely agree with this.  The FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and
> >other BSD-based OS projects prove that one need not exercise legal
> >control over distribution to ensure that the open source code stays
> >publicly available.  About 15,000 ports in the FreeBSD ports tree see to
> >that, at the very least.
> 
> I don't see how that example would be applicable to the cases
> of open source -> closed source that are plaguing the Quake II
> community these days, though.
> 
> Quake II is ten years old this year.  id Software originally
> released the "game" under a custom open-source license, while
> keeping the "engine" private.  (Many years later, all of the
> source for the game+engine was released under the GPL.)
> 
> The original custom open source license under which the 
> customizable 'game' portion of the code was released, was not
> very clear on whether the source had to be kept open for
> modified/derivative works.

One need not use the GPL to ensure that.


> 
> So we're left with either enacting hacky workarounds to
> mitigate the security flaws, or disabling key features of
> the mod, or not allowing the mod to be played anymore at
> all on our servers... or maybe hacking the binary--which
> no-one has time for.

The same line applies to that as to the GPL: you don't have to use it if
you don't want to abide by the license terms.  Frankly, I think that's a
sucky way to approach it, but I think it's sucky whether you're talking
about the GPL or unreleased copyrighted works.


> 
> >From my point of view, we have a very concrete example
> of a case where after a decade, it's become apparent that
> a license that would have required the source stay open
> would have been far preferable to one that allowed what
> was originally open source to become closed source.

Are you talking about the software being offered under an open source
license, or are you talking about the source being forced into public
accessibility by licensing?  You aren't exactly clear on that score.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"There comes a time in the history of any project when it becomes necessary
to shoot the engineers and begin production." - MacUser, November 1990

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