[GRASS5] Leaving

[Buchan Milne]

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Thierry Laronde wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 23, 2003 at 09:36:06PM +0000, Glynn Clements wrote:
>
>>Markus Neteler wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Mhhh, time to fork the project? Maybe some developers would join you...
>>>(recalling the license discussion). I agree with you that more radical
>>>changes are needed, as already posted several times.
>>>Maybe LGPL'ed libraries with GPL'ed application layer? Well, most
>>>developers have posted their opinion on this already.
>>
>>It's not clear to me exactly what Thierry's complaints with the
>>current direction are, but they don't appear to be related to
>>GRASS' licensing policy.
>
>
> I think that Markus is looking forward: it's clear that by starting with
> the Public Domain code, the licence of the future work has to be
> decided. The licence impacts:
> - The availability of the source enhancements
> - The attractivity to developers
> - The possibility for developers, and primarily the GRASS developers to
> make a living with GRASS (that is to have time to work on it because
> they get incomes from it);

- - The possibility for grass to be included in free software distributions.

> The third point discards GPL: if once you have made a work, everybody
> can take it and do whatever one wants, a developer has no incitative and
> no means to be paid for what it actually does. Bu this impacts the
> userland level which is typically a domain for custom applications.

But if you go with a license which doens't require changes to be
contributed back, a developer has no incentive to provide those changes
back to the community. If the license does require it, the incentive is
the ability to use the software in the first place.

> If one wants to make a GPL userland stuff, one has to be able to. But if
> one wants (or simply needs) to make a userland stuff not GPLed, one has
> to have the ability to do so.
>
> For the core, there are two major options: BSD (_with_ advertisement
> clause) or LGPL. At first sight LGPL seems better since it imposes to
> contribute back the source enhancements. But on a pratical level,
> BSD with the obligation to advertise the fact that you use code you have
> not developed (but what developed by such and such) and the
> impractibility to maintain a CVS tree too diverging from a code you rely
> on, make it possible.

AFAIK, BSD with the advertisement clause is not GPL compatible, and not
considered suitable for use in free software distributions (I may be
wrong but I think the original BSD does not comply with the Debian
requirements for free software).

>>I don't think that Motif is a good choice here. And I seem to be one
>>of the few open-source programmers who hasn't succumbed to the Gtk/Qt
>>groupthink. I still think that Motif is a good choice for an
>>X-specific toolkit on technical grounds (in terms of acceptability, it
>>depends upon the target platform; Motif is a good choice on commercial
>>Unices, a poor one on Linux).
>>
>>However, it definitely wouldn't be the right approach from a
>>portability perspective. Particularly given the licensing issues;
>>Motif is free for open-source platforms, but that doesn't apply to
>>MacOSX, and probably not to Cygwin (Cygwin is open-source, Windows
>>isn't). [Licensing isn't an issue for commercial Unices, as they
>>invariably include Motif with the OS.]
>
> The fact to impose the use of an open source kernel is for me not a
> problem, since one can provide a free kernel on almost any kind of
> hardware architecture. And the Unix orientation of GRASS (as expressed
> in the progman of at least 4.1.5) has to be retained.

Well, grass currently runs on platforms which would possibly not be
supportable if you use Motif (Cygwin and Mac OS X).

Using Motif basically makes grass less attractive on all the most
popular platforms ...

BTW, wxWindows uses native widgets on all platforms (Mac OS 9, OS X,
GTK2 on Linux, Motif on legacy Unix, native controls on Windows), and is
LGPL (with an exception allowing for easier commercialisation).

IMHO, the better strategy would be to make a MDI desktop (ie documents
instead of monitors) application in wxWindows (or wxPython), licensed
under GPL, basic grass libraries (enough to write proprietary modules)
LGPL, grass modules (and possibly some libraries) GPL. But I haven't
(yet) contributed code to grass (I have to check with the University
Intellectual Property office before I let anyone have binaries of my
module:-/).

Regards,
Buchan

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|--------------Another happy Mandrake Club member--------------|
Buchan Milne                Mechanical Engineer, Network Manager
Cellphone * Work            +27 82 472 2231 * +27 21 8828820x202
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