Hi all, In the face of Rick's abrupt departure, I feel that I need to provide more status and summary of the licensing situation.
Each copyright holder has the right to "dictate" whether or not they will allow license terms to be changed in their derived works. That is immutable, and I do not feel guilty for asserting my rights here. I feel bad if some think that I have been dictating beyond those rights, more than just getting stuff done that needs to be done. Rick won the uN versus uintN_t debate by the end of it, so his feedback was always being heard and incorporated by me. I am steering with direction from the community, as I have made my clear responsibility since becoming a "maintainer". However, those responsibilities do not affect my rights as a copyright holder, and here we see a conflict. Since my arrival, this OpenOCD list has often preferred talk over action too often, and I far prefer to engage in discussion on constructive issues like design, devices, and patches. I do not feel guilty for taking actions to fix the problems that seem apparent after inspection, because no one has been doing such work for the project Some decisions may prove to be wrong and need fixing, but others need executive order to be carried out while awaiting those fixes. I intend to carry on in this tradition, pro-actively addressing the community's needs and defending the terms of the GPL. Licensing violations are one such area where compliance action needs to be demanded immediately by the appropriate stakeholders, to preserve the overall legal integrity of the project. By protecting my own rights, I protect the rights of all free software users that do not want to see the GPL compromised. Given that even Rick conceded the past and current repository contents have been released under the GPL, further discussion is not a meaningful solution to violations of the license. The means to achieve compliance with technical solutions have been outlined and are wholly acceptable; any exception would apply only to a fork of the project, branched before any GPL-only revisions went into the repository. Because of my objections to an exception to the GPL, I will not allow a change to the license in the trunk of the repository, so compliance needs to be sought to ensure that distributors of binaries respect the limitations of the GPL. That seems like straightforward legal logic, not totalitarianism. The totalitarians are the FSF, who designed the legal language of the license to be this way; however, I think that is tantamount to saying the Founding Fathers were totalitarians seeking liberty, justice, and the American way. Sadly, those same people would be called "terrorists" in the US today; indeed, this should draw some meaningful parallels. These are the facts as I have come to understand them, and no one has given me any solid evidence to refute these points. I wish there were, because I tell you -- it sucks to have to be the one to push for license compliance like this. I do not like being seen as the enemy in the eyes of the community, but I feel it is necessary despite these consequences. Once the positive consequences have been seen and appreciated fully, maybe everyone will come around (or even thank me... I can dream). Until then, please feel free to hate me for sticking to my ideals and believing in the wisdom of foresight on these matters. I can take it. Otherwise, I am looking forward to seeing the community move past these issues and onto more constructive development matters. Cheers, Zach Welch Corvallis, OR _______________________________________________ Openocd-development mailing list Openocd-development@lists.berlios.de https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/openocd-development
