[License-review] Approval request for ZENTAO PUBLIC LICENSE

[Fei Teng]

Our Chinese version of ZPL can be found here
http://zpl.pub/page/zplv12.html


Next, we would like to share

*Why we drafted ZPL? *


Everything should be considered with its background.


When Richard Stallman proposed the notion of free software, most of the
software was controlled by big companies. Users at that time were in a less
favored position and their main purpose of using software was to do
scientific research. Richard proposed free software, so users could use,
change and publish software freely. It was the era that the software was
mainly basic software, such as operating system, database etc.


Now computer is available to everyone and software is not just for scholars
to do scientific research. Everyone can use software and those average
users are more into the function of the software and the cost of using it.
Not all of them cares about "free". In regards to open source software,
there are over thousands of thousands open source programs on github, among
which the most popular ones are funded by business entities or certain kind
of foundations. It is really rare that open source software developed by
one or a few developers can become popular.


There are a lot of searches on google about how to remove powered by
wordpress, drupal. And a lot of the answers are "yes, you can" which means
developers have the good will that users could actually keep the "powered
by" mark so to promote their software.


It is true that users can remove the mark. But is it what we should
promote? Or should the enthusiasm of the open source developers that should
be promoted? This is also the reason that we drafted ZPL so to protect
developers' enthusiasm. It is our belief that "free" comes with a certain
kind of prerequisite. We also believe that users would have more software
to use while open source software keep updating. If it is only emphasized
that users' right to use open source software and their right to change it,
rather than to protect developers' enthusiasm to develop and to update, the
outcome is obvious.


It is the reality that there are Chinese open source developers live on
very low income while users change their code and remove their badge.
Therefore, can we think about the good deed and the bad one while we are
talking about being "free"?


ZPL has been the foundation of the income of our team. We use ZPL to
protect developers' benefit as well as our balance. In this way, we can
keep updating our software and users can get supports as they need.


It is our intention to clarify our point of views on ZPL with you, even it
might not get approved. It is believed that a real good deed is more
important to us than just being absolute free.


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[License-review] Approval request for ZENTAO PUBLIC LICENSE
Saturday
TENG .. Richard, Josh (62)
On 06/23/2016 09:06 PM, Matthias Merkel wrote: > As said before: This makes
the situation a

On Saturday, June 25, 2016, Josh berkus <josh at postgresql.org
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','josh at postgresql.org');>> wrote:

> On 06/23/2016 09:06 PM, Matthias Merkel wrote:
> > As said before: This makes the situation a completely defferent one. I'm
> > not sure but maybe even legacy approval would be appropriate what would
> > be easier for your license but I can't say that. Maybe Richard can help
> > us there.
>
> Well, I think that legacy approval is the definite correct road.
>
> The new questions are:
>
> 1. Can we get a Chinese reader to review the Chinese version, since it's
> the authoritative version?
>
> 2. Is there anything in the license which is a direct contradiction of
> the OSD?
>
> 3. *Can* Zentao change any of the terms of the license to bring it into
> line with the OSD?
>
> Re: (1) I strongly suspect that some of the issues with the license are
> in translation.
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>
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