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Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1993 16:58:04 -0700
From: bruce@pdh.com (Bruce McKenzie)
Subject: MiscKit license comments (tongue firmly in cheek)
To: misckit@byu.edu
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Status: RO
I don't know if anyone else has read P.J. Plaugher's books "Programming on Purpose", but I recommend them.
In the second, he discusses starting a company, and what types of "business dealings" you are likely to encounter.
(For those who don't know, he started Whitesmiths Ltd, a fairly well-known microcomputer compiler supplier)
He describes several truisms, some of which I've paraphrased (since I loaned out the book):
1. Just because you're right doesn't mean that you'll win (in court)
2. Just because they're wrong doesn't mean that they'll lose (in court)
The essence is that business dealings are based on "faith". Hopefully _good_ faith. You cannot handle all cases of _bad_ faith dealings. You can just discourage them.
This license stuff is great, but my focus (I'm probably being naive) is:
1) getting the kit into use
1a) helping to let people know what they're using (i.e. publicity)
2) discouraging (you can never prevent) people from selling what can be acquired for free (i.e. the unmodified kit)
3) Encouraging (you can never force) feedback and bug fixes to the distribution
4) Allowing "interested" contributors to have a say in the direction of their contributions (not so much to allow them to remove it from the kit, but to be a part of the mod request/enhancement/bug fix process)
I was having a discussion with a co-worker about the licensing issue. Her point was that a large number of companies (e.g IBM) mill probably not use anything that has "license stuff" attached to it, and that we might as well have _NO_ license to get them to use it, or use GNU/FSF. I disagree with her assessment, but I thought it was worth bringing up here.
On a different note, how are the contributor's votes weighted? Is it one person, one vote? One organization, one vote? One submitted class, one vote?
Yet another topic: How many people are on this list? How many have used the Kit? How many contributers (besides Don) are there?
---
Bruce McKenzie (bruce@pdh.com, NeXTMail OK)
"So..happy..ironing..for..my..friend..Stimpy!"
PDH Inc. 2635 N. First St. Ste 224, San Jose, CA 95134
voice: 408/428-9596, fax: 408/428-9599
Epicenter: Section 127, Row 22, Seats 13-14
* Opinions expressed are those of my own twisted mind, not my employer's *
