License needed: Marcus Please start the process!

GRASS GRASS user
2

On Mon, Oct 11, 1999 at 09:58:33PM +1000, David Hine wrote:

Is this sounding like the direction to take?

By curious co-incidence I bother to check my mail and I find GRASS at
a critical point. I haven't been keeping up very well.

Yes, David, your reading of ESR's writings does suggest that direction
as the next one to take. But one thing more; the best thing for any
open source project that I've found is a decisive dictator.

Marcus, if you are the one; take courage, bite the bullet, and start
typing like crazy. Might help to read ESR as well.

--
James Cameron (quozl@us.netrek.org)
Netrek Vanilla Server Dictator

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Remote Area Power, Greek Scholar, Tenor Vocalist, Church Sound, Husband.

"Specialisation is for insects." -- Robert Heinlein.

3

On Mon, 11 Oct 1999, David Hine wrote:

David, et al.:

While I believe that Rich has a point in suggesting that we may benefit
from a free interview with an intellectual property specialist, I am
suggesting that Rich is capable of doing this and that he should do so,
offering the SUM to the list.

  Will do. I'll ask folks I know at Intel, Tek, Mentor Graphics, The
Portland Group and other such places out here.

None the less, I am also of the view that we should act promptly as
somehow the walls have ears in some cases like this. We would not want to
miss out because we were slow acting.

  I agree most emphatically. Now that the issue has been publicly rasied,
let's move forward smartly.

Is this sounding like the direction to take?

  Unless there is a compelling reason not to do something positive now, then
I vote, "yes." Even if the GPL is not the ultimate license for GRASS,
copyright and GPL are excellent interim measures. They do not preclude later
change and they may turn out to be what everyone wants and what everyone
needs.

Rich

Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President

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4

On Mon, Oct 11, 1999 at 09:58:33PM +1000, David Hine wrote:

While I believe that Rich has a point in suggesting that we may benefit
from a free interview with an intellectual property specialist, I am
suggesting that Rich is capable of doing this and that he should do so,
offering the SUM to the list.

In my experience intellectual property specialist have no clue about
free software. Chances are high they might add unnecessary confusion.
Of course any high quality input is appreciated.

I believe that Marcus Neteler, perhaps in concert with the development
team at Baylor, should start the process.

As far as I know he already brought up that issue a couple of times
towards the group located at Baylor.

The process could be:
1./ Marcus declares on behalf of the GRASS user community, that the
ownership of the software and source code lies, jointly, with the known
user/contributor community as in evidence on this list and in the
various files recording contributors over time. He asserts that the
ownership statement derives in part from his moderating the development
debate and process and from the development process itself. He gieves
the history of the "ownership and makes clear the the justification for
the claim we are making. He does so in several forums where GIS and RS
is discussed.

This is the way to go, (if we do not get better information on GRASS
ownership.) Baylor already claimed ownership.

2./ We wait for about two weeks. Marcus then further asserts that the
community intends to licence the software under the GPL or whatever
licence seems to be the consensus by then.
3./ While we wait for alternative assertions of ownership of GRASS ,
interested parties gieve the executive summary of the benefits of the
licence they favour. Bernard, could you give us a short point form
summary of the benefits of the GPL in a post?

I am certainly willing to do that. Though I have the feeling that
I will repeat myself.
  http://earth.uni-muenster.de/~eicksch/GRASS-Help/msg02105.html
  http://earth.uni-muenster.de/~eicksch/GRASS-Help/msg02195.html

Most important:
  GRASS should be free software.

Second:
  It is very important to choose a well known free software
  license, so that developers and contributors
  know what they talk about right away.

Third:
  There are a couple of free software licenses.
  http://www.opensource.org/licenses/

  The GPL(aka copyleft) imposes the most restrictions
  in order to prevent long term abuse of any kind and
  in several situations. It is a very sound license, because
  it worked in several cases (NeXT Inc and their Objective-C
  compiler comes to mind.) and it is widely used.
  (Which it was not tested in court, because the NeXT lawyer
  though they would loose.)

  All other licenses are have less restrictions and therefore
  less restrictions. Mostly because they want companies and
  other people to use the code freely. This means they allow
  companies to close up improved version of the source and make
  them proprietory. Some licenses are made to reserve more rights
  for a major company dealing with the source, like the MPL
  (netscape) or the QPL (TrollTech).

5./ We set a day for a vote on the preferred forms and then authorise
Marcus Neteler to take action on behalf of the user/maintainer
community.

I am not sure that voting will help here.

  Bernhard

--
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