Summary

Decentralized modifications to a programming language and its implementations can seriously damage the language's portability and semantic clarity. Unfortunately, there is a tension between centralizing control of a programming language and providing source code security to nervous users. In FunnelWeb, this trade-off has been resolved to some extent by releasing the source code along with a request that if the functionality of the program is modified, that the program's name be changed and a different file extension be chosen for input files created under the modified program. The author of FunnelWeb has decided to maintain an official version of FunnelWeb over which he will own copyright, but which he will release under GNU license from time to time. This means that copyright on all changes to FunnelWeb must be signed over to the author before they have a chance of being incorporated in the official version. Finally, it is possible that this reluctance of the author to remove his copyrighted version from the development cycle of the official version will result in a GNU breakout in which a diverging GNU version of FunnelWeb will be maintained by the GNU community. The author hopes this won't be necessary and requests, if this happens, that the diverging GNU version be renamed.