IP Clearance

[Chris Travers]

Just a note on this here.  I agree with Larry that the idea that all
contributions should be voluntary is a good principle, and I also
agree it is certainly not always a good practice.

When LedgerSMB forked from SQL-Ledger, this was a very acrimonious
process.  The developer did his level best to dissuade us from using
his code including changing the license (under community pressure he
changed back).  In a world where everything was equal, I would not
have used his code (I will spend a lot of time getting it all out).
However at the same time, I had customers on SQL-Ledger to support and
I couldn't do that on SQL-Ledger given the security holes we had found
and the difficulty in getting them fixed.  So my obligations to my
customers had to override the idea that it's far better if everyone
just gets along.

I bring this up because a lot of things are really nice principles and
may work well under certain circumstances.  But there are other cases
where they break down.  The fact that the SQL-Ledger author could (and
did!) throw a fit was less important than that we had the legal right
to do what we did and that I had obligations to my customers.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers