current OS license and the Source that lies ahead

[Gary Lang]

The concern here seems to be about Autodesk creating a fork. 

Let me state for the record: we (Autodesk) have no interest in seeing
this happen and no control to make this happen even if we did. None. The
people in charge of MapServer today are the same people that were in
charge a week ago. The license is the license. We will be minority
voters on the board of the foundation. Where is the concern coming from?


The MySQL concern is a valid one. We struggled with it ourselves. At the
end of the day, we would certainly like people to buy a commercial
version with support, etc. But the fact is, they can use the community
version of MSE and do what they want with it and not pay us a dime. Or
they can use MapServer. Nothing we do - nothing - can stop this from
being the case. 

In terms of our commercial goals - we're more interested in the RedHat
model than the MySQL model, if that helps this to make any sense. We
believe we and our partners can do well selling support and services on
top of MapServer products. And we don't care which one they choose if
they're working with us, though we'd like to see them value the work we
did with MSE.

Does this clarify things?

Gary

-----Original Message-----
From: UMN MapServer Users List [mailto:MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU] On
Behalf Of Attila Csipa
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2005 2:08 PM
To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
Subject: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] current OS license and the Source that
lies ahead

On Tuesday 29 November 2005 19:32, Charlton Purvis wrote:
> state will always remain covered under the license below?  Basically
I'm
> trying to make sure that a shop can't somehow repossess something that
was
> originally OS thus preventing folks from using it like it's being used
now.

I'm not a legal person so don't take this for granted, but as I
understand it 
a license change cannot be retroactive (at least in most European
countries I 
have experience with) without consent of both parties unless the
original 
license was somehow flawed or legally unacceptable. This means that you
could 
always use the code as per the license you got it with (eg the day
before 
Autodesk or whoever came into the picture). I understand my few lines of

crappy code in MapServer don't entitle me to make bold predictions and 
judgements, but my strong personal belief coming from my past experience
is 
that Open Source Projects do not really exist without their communities,
and 
I'm not sure the major software companies really get it - and only time
will 
tell if Autodesk has gotten (or will get) it right with their old-new to
be 
dual-license whatever-it's-called product. Having source available is
one 
thing, but it's the Community that differentiates a real Open Source
Project 
from (what I call) a Public project - something that is effectively
funded by 
a single large entity hoping that people will get hooked on a 'free'
version 
and eventually upgrade to their commercial versions. That would not be
truly 
Open Source. That would be reinvention of the shareware concept of the
early 
90's. (Trolltech with QT comes to mind and MySQL seems to be going more
and 
more in that direction). This brings us to one of the most debated
points in 
Open Source development and the worst result of an unrecoverable split
in any 
OS community - the bane of the Fork. I sincerely hope that it this never

happens here and the crack that appeared from the way the Foundation was

formed will fill up with time and the MapServer community will be as
unified 
on the future of MapServer as it was before the announcement. Thank for
your 
patience reading so far, I hope I have not hurt anybodys feelings, and
if I 
have inadvertently done so, accept my apologies.