Mailing-List: contact cocoon-dev-help@xml.apache.org; run by ezmlm
Message-ID: <38FF6BCC.DEB47FDD@apache.org>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 22:42:52 +0200
From: Stefano Mazzocchi <stefano@apache.org>
Organization: Apache Software Foundation
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: cocoon-dev@xml.apache.org
Subject: Re: LGPL + APL = not good!
References: <38FA4AD0.F5CECCEC@apache.org>
 <38FD444F.74C49D8C@relativity.yi.org> <38FD74D6.37234B8A@apache.org>
 <38FF4BA3.20C16F3D@relativity.yi.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

"Kevin A. Burton" wrote:
> 
> Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
> <snip>
> > This is exactly the attitude that would ge us in trouble. In case you
> > didn't notice, the ASF is responsible for the software that runs more
> > than half of the internet and how much money is this worth?
> >
> > People get _killed_ for a lot less. A _lot_ less.
> 
> Maybe in Italy ... ;)

Not to start a "my country is better than yours fight" but aren't USA
the country with the highest number of murders per inhabitant? :)
Please, remove that old "italy == mafia" stereotype, yankee :)
 
> Ug.  I am sure you are right.  We have to go by the lowest common
> denominator since the software runs in different countries.

Correct.
 
> It is totally scary though.  I mean all of us make $0.0 dollars off
> this.  It is totally confusing!

Don't tell me. I'm almost a kid that codes software in his spare time...
then three years later I'm part of the highest elite that just won the
ACM price (the equivalent of the Nobel price for computer science) [hey,
not for my merit, that's for sure :), I'm just on the bandwagon with
those great guys].

Yes, we are not making money out of this, but this is pointless. Even
that guy that wrote the DVD DeCSS program is young, finnish and not
making any money out of it... that didn't help.

Would you want to be the next? No thanks, I don't.

Sure, they could sue the ASF and bankrupt us (weee, considering we have
35K$, that's probably not even enough to pay the latest of their layers
for this)... so what?

Or we win and we gain 100M$... then what? we distribute free -golden-
t-shirts to all the apache committers?

Apache wins if it stays out of the muddy battle fields of marketing and
law as much as possible. Otherwise, we'll get in big troubles.

Getting into those fields is _exactly_ what M$ and others would want us
to do, so they can tear us (and our imagine) apart with media and
lawyers.

How do I know? I don't. But I don't want to know either. What we have is
perfect... so why changing it? for a few lines of code? c'mon, let's be
more creative than that.

> > We do _not_ have the money to go to trial and unlike the FSF, we want to
> > stay away of legal issues so we don't have legal consultants.
> 
> Maybe something can be worked out...

This is something that we _don't_ want to work out.

Both IBM and Sun are willing to give us all the legal support we need,
and I'm sure many layers will volunteer for that just for the prestige
they would get. (open source is becoming another show-business, after
all).

But we don't want to have to. That's the point.
 
-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi      One must still have chaos in oneself to be
                          able to give birth to a dancing star.
<stefano@apache.org>                             Friedrich Nietzsche
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 Missed us in Orlando? Make it up with ApacheCON Europe in London!
------------------------- http://ApacheCon.Com ---------------------