Re: [moregroupware-devel] Thomas Bley :: Formal Complaint

[Ryan V. <xf...@co...>]

On 04/04/2004, at 5:51 PM, Franky Van Liedekerke wrote:
> <snip>
> too bad this happened, I think Thomas just didn't quite grasp the GPL
> idea.

Seems not :-(

>> I recommend:
>>
>>  1. Removing Thomas Bley from the development team
>>
>>   - I am willing to step in as "caretaker" for all his modules if 
>> noone
>>     else does
>
> I would like to help out also if my help is wanted. I have a go from my
> current employer to release my current work under GPL so I'll package 
> them
> up and send them to Karsten/this lisit so somebody can put them in CVS 
> (or
> give me access): Galaxia workflow, TTS, inventory module. Not always
> needed modules but I'm proud of them :)

There's two ways to tackle this.  You can try and educate him on the 
whole open source concept, and why community involvement is important, 
but he may be stuck in the mentality that giving back to the community, 
essentially for free, isn't a profitable move.  I'm strongly of the 
belief otherwise, but that's beside the point.

Instead, explain that by releasing these modules to the public, it 
means others actively work on it, and far more bugfixes and feature 
additions to these modules essentially occur without him actually 
needing to pay for you to work on it, giving you time to work on new 
things, ultimately resulting in more productivity.  Your company does 
well, the open source community does well; everybody's a winner.

> If somebody wants to know what I've already done: look for my name on 
> the
> net. I helped a bit debugging OpenLDAP, helped developing/debugging the
> qmail-ldap patch, worked (and still do some basic stuff) on the MkCdRec
> project, created my own php webmail, worked on agora(on sourceforge),
> etc... So maybe this convinces someone to grant me CVS access, so I can
> maintain these modules then as well.

Cool :-)  Best way to probably tackle this is to start sending 
patches/modules in the usual way (either by the patch tracker, or 
emailing active developers), so Karsten then can get a good feel of 
what your coding is like.

>>  2. Work diligently and quickly to eradicate ANY module that is
>>     copyright to Thomas
>>
>>   - For obvious reasons; leaving the modules in and distributing them 
>> in
>>     the long term will only expose us and any of our users to a law 
>> suit
>>     in the future
>
> I don't see a lawsuit comming up. As long as you mention that the code 
> is
> based on his work and distribute the copyright, the GPL license has 
> been
> fullfilled.

Yes, indeed.  The thing is, I'm pretty sure it is possible to revoke a 
license for your work; this has been something discussed very recently 
at conferences and groups I've been involved in.  This may have 
happened to GPL products previously, but I can't find any examples.  
I'm hoping I'm wrong :-)

R

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