Re: [Notion-devel] what we're waiting for

[Aron G. <agr...@n0...>]

Hi Rawash (is this how you prefer to be addressed?)

Thanks for this update...

M Rawash wrote:  [Mon Apr 12 2010, 11:25:54AM EDT]
>hi everybody, thought I'd give you a little update of what's going on.
>Ole Brønner and I spoke earlier about our legal situation (with regard
>to Tuomo's license); he's in favour of getting Tuomo's blessing to fork
>the latest Ion3(plus) release, while i'm in favour of forking an earlier
>version of Ion that didn't include Tuomo's terms. Ole has contacted
>Tuomo and we have set a deadline ("a couple of days") for a response,

This is certainly the most desirable option, though it does seem
unlikely that Tuomo will acquiesce. No offense intended, but if
he saw your comments earlier to the tune of "let him sue!" that
probably didn't help.

>and since it's very likely that Tuomo won't respond, i think we should
>be aware of our other options while we wait, and here they are:
>
>- forking Ion while keeping Tuomo's license, this, of course, will
>render the fork 'non-free', and infringe on our own right to license any
>future work under a different license.

IMHO we want to avoid this option because we will continue to
have problems getting into distributions.

>- fork Ion and change the license (possibly to GPL), this will leave us
>vulnerable to Tuomo's hostility (assuming he is indeed hostile), since
>it's basically 'illegal' in light of Tuomo's additional terms (which,
>according to Tuomo, "take precedence over the LGPL").

IMHO we want to avoid this option too. We will be on dubious
legal ground and distributions will not want to deal with it.

>- fork an earlier version of Ion that didn't include Tuomo's additional
>terms (or one that had a loophole in it), this means a lot of extra
>work, when many people would like to see us moving on (start adding new
>features, rather than going back and fix/add old ones).

If Tuomo doesn't give his blessing to fork current ion3 with
simple LGPL then I think this is the next best option. It means
more work but it leaves us free of license problems.

Regards,
Aron