RE: [webmin-l] Virtualmin Professional license

[Thomas E D. <ed...@al...>]

Hello all!,

This thread is getting old.

We have all enjoyed virtualmin _FREE_ for a long time!!  If Joe wants to
make a dollar for his hard work, _GREAT_!! He deserves it!

I have been very greatful for what he has done.  I probably will never
purchase the "Professional" version.  Many may and that's your prerogative
just as it is mine not to.  I don't have the need.  I just have a few
virtual domains that I own and operate.  Joe has promised all the features
of the "Professional" version in the _FREE_ Virtualmin but delayed, so
what's the beef?

My system operates on CentOS a derivative of RedHat Enterprise Linux.  I am
greatful RedHat makes their source rpms publicly avaliable as I cannot
afford to pay for the support of their GPL'd product.

Without people such as Joe and RedHat, we'd all be bowing to Bill!!!!

'nuff said!

> -----Original Message-----
> From: web...@li... 
> [mailto:web...@li...] On Behalf 
> Of Joe Cooper
> Sent: Friday, September 16, 2005 7:05 PM
> To: web...@li...
> Subject: Re: [webmin-l] Virtualmin Professional license
> 
> Hi Barry and all,
> 
> I'm going to try this again, and hopefully, it will put this 
> thing to bed before the rest of the list gets tired of our 
> legal ranting.
> 
> Barry, the crux of your argument is that we, the copyright 
> holders, cannot make a commercial variant of something that 
> we have previously released under the GPL and that 
> dual-licensing with the GPL and a GPL-incompatible license is 
> not legally supportable.  You've stated this in dozens of 
> different ways, but it all comes down to whether we have a 
> legal right to do so.  As I mentioned before, this is a very 
> common misconception about the GPL.  So, let's dispel this 
> myth first with a simple question:
> 
> Who will sue the copyright holder for not following the 
> letter of the license under which they have released their code?
> 
> A copyright infringement lawsuit would have to be brought in 
> order for any "legal mess" to occur, which is what you 
> believe you're helping us avoid with this discussion.
> 
> So, who will bring this lawsuit?  You?  The FSF?  Virtualmin, Inc.?
> 
> Of these three options, only one has a legal leg to stand on, 
> and I'll give you three guesses as to which one it is.  The 
> first two guesses don't count.
> 
> It ought to be obvious from this simple question, and the 
> obvious answer, that there can be no such thing as a license 
> that applies to the copyright holder (a license has to be 
> enforceable under the law, and thus there has to be someone 
> with greater rights than the license grants).  So, there goes 
> the argument that we have to license every line of code we 
> write for the rest of our lives under the GPL (whether it is 
> part of Virtualmin or not).  We simply don't, and no amount 
> of arguing that we do is going to change the legal facts.  
> I'm just not going to argue that point any further.  If you 
> still don't believe me, I'm sorry, there's nothing more I'm 
> willing to say on the matter.  Take it up with the FSF or an 
> attorney, if you like.  If you believe that we have the legal 
> copyright necessary to license it to others under the GPL 
> *despite starting out with a different license*, then you 
> must believe we also have the legal rights necessary to 
> license it under other terms.
> 
> On to the other issues you've raised that are new to the 
> discussion and worth covering:
> 
> 
> If you believe you have contributed code to Virtualmin that you would 
> rather we not include, say the word and show me the code.  
> Let's not be 
> wishy-washy, and say "it may be that others, or even 
> I"...Either you did 
> or you didn't.  I don't believe anyone has been misled into 
> contributing 
> code to Virtualmin without awareness that there had been a non-GPL 
> version in the past and there would be a non-GPL version in 
> the future. 
>   But if there is a piece of code that fits that description, 
> point it 
> out.  There's no time like the present.  I suspect you greatly 
> over-estimate the amount of non-Jamie-authored code in any version of 
> Virtualmin.
> 
> 
> OpenCountry has nothing to do with Virtualmin, Inc. or Virtualmin 
> Professional.  Virtualmin, Inc. is a Texas Corporation with two 
> shareholders: Jamie Cameron and me.  OpenCountry are a nice bunch of 
> folks who have sponsored Webmin development, and I applaud them for 
> their involvement.  There is no need to pester them about 
> licensing of 
> Virtualmin...they'll have no clue what you're talking about.
> 
> 
> Anyway, the long and short of this issue is that a copyright 
> holder is 
> never subject to the license under which they distribute 
> their own code, 
> even if that license is the GPL.  I'm out of ways to explain 
> this, and 
> until you come to understand this fact, we simply aren't 
> going to end up 
> talking about the same problem.
> 
> If you don't want to take my word for it, take it up with anyone you 
> like.  The FSF won't be particularly happy to hear from you, but they 
> might be willing to answer your questions (I am a core developer on 
> another large Open Source project that approached the FSF 
> about turning 
> the project into a GNU project, and now I know their approach 
> and when 
> they have an interest in a project, and I can assure you they 
> don't care 
> one whit about Virtualmin).
> 
> If you'd like to keep discussing it, let's make it private, as this 
> isn't really relevant to Webmin.  I just posted the 
> announcement here as 
> I know there are quite a few folks here who in the past had shown an 
> interest in the ransom or GPL version of Virtualmin.  Just 
> thought I'd 
> fill them in on what we've been working on, and I really 
> didn't intend 
> to start a firestorm about licensing.
> 
> Regards,
> Joe
> 
> 
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