Mail Archives: cygwin/2000/04/30/15:02:39
Chris Faylor <cgf AT cygnus DOT com> wrote:
I just had to say something here...
> I don't mean to be picking on you since you seem to "get it" and
> are willing to dig to figure out a problem. It just seems that
> the cygwin project suffers from the lack of a component that is
> more prevalent in other open source projects.
> ...
> ... The perceived lack doesn't seem to cause anyone to want to
> roll up their shirt sleeves and dive in. I think that there is
> somehow a different mindset at work here than in many other open
> source projects. Or, maybe we just don't have the critical mass.
I personally feel there is something else entirely going on here, and
this is *definately* the case for me. I simply will *not* contribute
to Cygwin because I am not interested in contributing to a project
that forces a particular license on developers, and more importantly
that gives one company the right to make money from Cygwin through
non-GPL licensing. I won't have any part of an Open Source project
that attempts to force the GPL (or an Open Source license in the
updated licensing) on *other* projects, which is exactly what Cygwin
does, unless you purchase a commercial license.
I am sorry, but do you really expect developers to contribute to a
project with such draconian licensing? I am not going to spend my
free time making Cygwin better so that Cygus/Red Hat can sell
commercial licenses of it and make money from *my* fixes and/or
enhancements.
If you *really* want more contributions to Cygwin, then open it up.
Fully. Go ahead and *level* the playing field. Put the Cygwin
components under the LGPL license so that it can be used with any
project, and does not try to force the GPL license on another project
(or force that the project be Open Source). Sure by opening thing up
in this way you would open up the project to competition. Some other
company and/or individual could take the sources, build a 'Cygwin'
compatible distribution and distribute/sell/support it. But if they
did, you would also benefit as everything they did with it would have
to be Open Source also.
The whole point of the Open Source development model is supposed to
be that the entire source code is open and available for use by
everyone, and that no particular company and/or invididual has any
special rights over anyone else. If you want to make money from the
Open Source project, you sell support, branding and distribution
services.
Red Hat gets this and that is how the entire Red Hat Linux
distribution works. Red Hat has made a lot of money this way also.
Red Hat has also been re-branded and distributed by other companies
like Mandrake, but this hasn't been a problem for Red Hat. Now that
Cygnus is a part of Red Hat, perhaps it is time for Cygnus to get it
also. I don't believe for a minute that DJGPP or EMX would have ever
become as popular as they have if it was not possible to build
*anything* with them.
If you want to be Open Source, don't sit on the damn fence. Go fully
Open Source. If you want to sell proprietry products, then close it
up. But most of all don't try to disguise a proprietry product and
hope that Open Source developers will be duped into helping with it.
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but this is exactly how I feel. And BTW I
also won't touch Qt for exactly the same reasons.
Regards,
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| SciTech Software - Building Truly Plug'n'Play Software! |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| Kendall Bennett | Email: KendallB AT scitechsoft DOT com |
| Director of Engineering | Phone: (530) 894 8400 |
| SciTech Software, Inc. | Fax : (530) 894 9069 |
| 505 Wall Street | ftp : ftp.scitechsoft.com |
| Chico, CA 95928, USA | www : http://www.scitechsoft.com |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com
- Raw text -