Re: [Openocd-development] License

[Zach W. <zw...@su...>]

On Wed, 2009-06-24 at 14:27 +0200, Laurent Gauch wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 2009-06-24 at 12:20 +0200, Dominic Rath wrote:
> > >/ This goes inentionally to you alone, feel free to bring it up on the list if you want...
> > />/ 
> > />/ > You have made me start to wonder if it would be possible to bring some
> > />/ > sort of claim of "misrepresentation" against the project authors, were
> > />/ > your suggestion to be taken by others.  The COPYING file is the standard
> > />/ > way of notifying potential authors of a project's license, so I think
> > />/ > that I would have a good chance of proving that the authors neglected to
> > />/ > inform authors -- whether by intention or accident.
> > />/ 
> > />/ I suppose that means I have to remove all code you've contributed from
> > />/ the repository in order to protect myself from what you might or might
> > />/ not do. I will also have to ask all distributors to remove any version
> > />/ since january 2009.
> > /
> > Actually, that would no longer be acceptable; you are welcome to fork
> > the code, but I ask that you avoid making such changes.  The license is
> > and was GPL, and I am now a copyright holder, maintainer, and active
> > contributor to the project.  You would be taking a unilateral action
> > that would not be uniformly supported by the OpenOCD community, whereas
> > I am asserting my individual copyrights.  I can do what I have done, but
> > the community should vote to exile my changes.
> >   
> 
> You maybe are holder, maintainer, contributor ... but you are not the 
> CREATOR / AUTHOR !

Are you any of those things, today?  Is he contributing, today?

> Please respect MR. Dominic Rath. He is the CREATOR of OpenOCD 2004 (with 
> 1-2 years or more of intensive coding)

I do want to be clear that I do value and respect his contributions and
his copyrights, and I welcome both of you to continue contributing to
the OpenOCD community in the future.

However, neither he nor you have contributed much constructive lately,
which means you have effectively abdicated your authority in the
community.  In an open source community, that authority derives from
being a responsible and active contributor.  Does this seem reasonable?

Tying back into copyright, your authority over the copyrights for your
own respective contributions will continue to be respected, in so far as
it was expressly written into the repository -- they were released under
the GPL without any exceptions.  If you or anyone provides sound legal
arguments that can refute this claim, I will back off on this assertion.

>From what I now understand, you had been enjoying dual-licensing by the
original author.  Unfortunately, that arrangement appears to have ceased
to have a legal foundation once the repository accepted contributions
from others -- without securing copyright assignments.  At that point,
any binaries that were produced from those derived works appear to have
violated the GPL.  This is how it appears to me.

As I have been trying to do for others for whom the OpenOCD project
provides part of your revenue stream, I encourage you to discuss these
matters with your legal counsel.  I would be very interested if any
responses from these individuals conflict with the assessment that I
have been making of the situation; I will be asking the FSF for their
opinions on these matters.

> I was myself a contributor to the project, but before there ais SVN ! 
> Yes, strange for you.
>
> But I am a contributor too.

I understand that you presently sell dongles and make money from them.
Do you plan to contribute directly (with patches) or indirectly (with
funding) to help the community solve the current problems?  To be clear,
you have no obligation to do so, just as we have no obligation to help
commercial distributors fix the problems that this licensing SNAFU may
have caused.

However, I _am_ willing to help those who show an effort to work toward
constructive solutions, as I do feel terrible for the angst that this
situation has caused the community.  I will be sure that we provide a
solution for the community, but it may not be good enough for you to use
in terms of delivery schedule or performance.

> What 'project contribution' means for you?
> - Adding a lot of patches
> - Donating hardware to end-users
> - Building binary for easy-of-use
> - Reading the forum
> - Writing to the forum
> - Documenting the project
> - ...

Yup.  All those things, and copyright protects all "fixed" works.  

> All these tasks were needed to bring OpenOCD as it is actually.

I have done all of those tasks myself to bring up free software
communities.  I know it is generally a lot of thankless work, so I do
want to generously thank you and all those that helped the community
make the project what it is today.  Your work has been appreciated.

> Each project/products needs manager - developer - tester - distributor - 
> end-userSSSSSSSSS
> The end-users know what they need.

Not always, but the torches and pitchforks helped send a clear message.
Saying "end-users know what they need [in OpenOCD]" is like saying
"teenagers know what they need in a car".  

They may be the customer, but would would let them design the car?  Or
manage its production?  How about QA?  Distribution?  Ah!! Gas station
attendants!  I am kidding, of course.  No offense to any users.  I live
in Oregon, where it's illegal to pump your own gas; we have attendants
at all stations, often staffed by -- you got it -- teenagers. :)

I have acknowledged the fact that users demand a solution, and the
solutions presented have been queued for eventual delivery.  Someone
will implement the suggestions that have been put forth, and life will
go back to normal.

> OpenOCD has a success story as open source from 2004. Please respect the 
> story !

And there will be a bigger success story in 2009, when all binary
distributions of OpenOCD provide fully GPL-compliant solutions.  

Right? :)

> Until now, the success story says D2XX is needed ! Sorry, it is.

I have explained how this functionality does not need to be lost.

You should be able to deliver exactly the same binary distribution that
you have been distributing, except it would be produced from scratch on
the user's machine.  There may be other build-kit related solutions,
which I have indicated that I am beginning to investigate.

> I am sure there will be better GPL code to push the D2XX out from the 
> source.
> You will have a better GPL but a lot of regression regarding final speed.
> 
> This is  my opinion.

Thank you for providing your feedback.  I hope you understand and will
respect that we intend for the current project source code to remain
under the GPL license.   We will find solutions for users that solve
these problems that comply with its terms.

Cheers,

Zach Welch
Corvallis, OR