Subject: MiscKit license comments (tongue firmly in cheek)

From: [email-masked] (Bruce McKenzie)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1993 16:58:04 -0700

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 ([email-masked], 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 *

---

From: [email-masked] (Don Yacktman)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1993 02:03:13 -0600

> of the mod request/enhancement/bug fix process)

This really is what I hope to accomplish, despite what the license may lead people to
think. :-)  Actually, that's the main reason for feedback.  I've tried to keep
this as open as possible, and still leave in enough control/sanity to keep
things sane.  On the whole, I'm pretty pleased with where the license is at,
but it's important to make sure that these goals are really being met.  Since
I've been immersed in trying to write the license, it's easy to get caught up
in the details and forget the big picture; the feedback so far has been helpful
and I always appreciate a sanity check.  (And those clode enough to me to know
what kind of hours I've been keeping the last three weeks know that I definitely
need a sanity check! :-)   )

>  vote? One organization, one vote? One submitted class, one vote?

I had given this some thought, and it seems to me that each contributor should get one
vote, regardless of how much they have contributed; since currently, I have the largest
number of contributions, I would benefit the least as far as "having things go MY way"
but I'm only one person and what do I know?  Does anyone think that this should
really be done any other way?  I think one vote/contributor would be reasonable and
it's easy to keep track of.  I also hope we get things going right to begin
with so that voting is only rarely necessary!  Oh, and if an organization were
a contributor, that would be one vote...

The one vote per class might create incentive to submit more classes, but I think
it could have more negative consequences than positive...

> many contributers (besides Don) are there?

There are 81 e-mail addresses on the MiscKit mailing list.  Most go to individuals,
but I know that at least two of them are "distribution points" that branch the
list out within organizations.  (NeXT and AFS)  So there are more than 81...

As to who has used the kit...this I don not know for sure, but I have been sent
very friendly e-mail from about 20 or so people who have thanked me for making
this kit public, and stating that they are using it in some project or another,
and I have seen several submissions to the archives that use at least the
string class, or an early version of it.  I'd be interested to find out if
anyone has found the other classes particularly useful; I know the string gets
a lot of use.  (And I use it in just about everything I do, now.)  Also, anything
I do with the GameKit by default uses several MiscKit classes, including
the string, the lock file, the log file, and the extended app, and the time and
stopwatch classes...

Finally, on contributors, this is clearly listed in the AUTHORS.rtf file in
the kit itself, so check there if you want details.  Here's who has sent
in a class, palette, or other "complete" thing:

Don Yacktman, [email-masked]
Scott Anguish, [email-masked]
James Heiser, [email-masked]
Mark Onyschuk, [email-masked]
John Karabaic, [email-masked]

And people who have added code to existing objects:

Carl Lindberg, [email-masked]
David Lehn, [email-masked]
Steve Hayman, [email-masked]
Robert T. Thomas ([email-masked])

And there are several other items which are "promised" and waiting on the license
issue to be finalized first, which is utterly reasonable.  (And I hope to have
it finished off within a week so that a new release with the new materials can
be made; we'll all benefit from that!)

Well, enough for now...

Later,
-don