Draft 1 of the OpenDesk.com Public Source License

Wilfredo Sanchez wsanchez at apple.com
Sun Nov 21 00:25:19 UTC 1999


| > Dude, did you hit your head on something?  Most of Darwin is
| > external contributions.
|
| Don't fake me out, dude. Those came before the APSL, and were for  
the most
| part ARPA-funded and under the BSD license.

  We weren't talking about the APSL.  That code will remain under  
the BSD license.  We were talking about non-GPL software.  In any  
case, we have many ongoing contributions from the BSD community in  
support of Darwin.  NetBSD has been very good to us, and FreeBSD is  
happy to join in.  If we had taken their code and forked, you might  
have a point.  But we didn't, and we're exchanging code on an ongoing  
basis.  That's highly relevant.

| > As for the stuff that originates at Apple:  NetInfo was ported to   
| > Linux within weeks of its release.  The Streaming Server is running   
| > on Solaris, FreeBSD, and Linux, and there are people working on   
| > cleaning up the proxy code. OpenPlay is up and going on Windows,  
and
| > we've made an external developer the tech lead for OpenPlay;  
he's our
| > first outside developer to run one of our projects, and quite  
likely
|
| All of the action reported here is people porting your code away from 
| your own platform. Who is helping _you_?

  This _is_ helping us.  First off, porting to other platforms is  
good.  It grows our user base, and help establish our technology.   
These ports are a big part of why we open source's those projects in  
the first place.  Surely, you aren't ignorant of the benefits.   
Second, as I said, there is active work on the proxy code in the  
streaming software, and we have an external developer now in charge  
of OpenPlay.  He's doing his development on Mac OS 8, if that matters  
to you.  The point is that we have developers taking the software  
bringing, it to the platform they are comfortable with, and working  
on the code.

  What your game here?  We're not looking for free employees,  
despite your belief that you know something about our intentions and  
claims to the contrary.  We are joining the community, and if some  
work benefits the community, in the end it will benefit us.  That's  
good all around, and something you should be happy about.  Have you  
been staring at licenses so long that you forgot why open source is  
interesting?  Why do you have to ask who is helping _us_?  The BSD's,  
the ASF, and several others have been helping us, and continue to do  
so, as I said, though you want to dismiss this with some hoo-hah  
about ARPA.  You seem to think we need you in particular, or it  
doesn't count.  It turns out that we don't, and it does.

| > So you're telling Open Desk to dual license their code so you can   
| > make a GPL version that they won't be able to use any more unless   
| > they swallow the GPL.
|
| No, actually I'd rather they use a straight GPL so that they get _all_ 
| of the code back, as does everybody else. But I'm willing to compromise 
| if they won't do that.

  What are you compromising?  Nothing; the code it theirs.  They  
want to give you something, and you're saying that's not good enough.  
 You seem to want to take what they give you and use it to pry out  
everything else they have with this GPL lever.  Fine, but don't  
pretend like you're acting in their interest.

  What I don't get is why you advocate open source and endorse  
licenses for software than you aren't interested in.  If the GPL is  
so great, why and an OSD and license approval at all?  Maybe you  
should just ask everyone to use the GPL, toss out this other process  
and see how far that gets you.

	-Fred


--
       Wilfredo Sanchez, wsanchez at apple.com
Apple Computer, Inc., Core Operating Systems / BSD
          Technical Lead, Darwin Project
   1 Infinite Loop, 302-4K, Cupertino, CA 95014




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