On 05.03.2004, at 02:17, Gregory John Casamento wrote:
Didn't you know about this? See link:
http://www.fsf-europe.org/projects/fla/fla.en.html
No, interesting!
But how does it help with the fact that all contributions to GNUstep
are
missing that and are therefore missing the whole reason for
submitting under
such an assignment (which is to streamline copyright)?
I guess this should be fixed ASAP (at least by all European GNUstep
contributors), otherwise the state of the GNUstep CVS is in flux
regarding
that.
It's an agreement which would allow you to contribute SOPE to the
FSF. It's
not an assignment since, as you say, it's not possible in the EU.
But it
does allow you to license it to the FSF such that it is effectively
the
same as an assignment. :)
Well, FSF goal is to promote free software. OGo and SOPE are both
completely
free software. So it is already contributed to the free software
movement,
I'm sure RMS/FSF agrees (you don't even need to assign copyright to
call it
GNU software, I asked him, the only requirement for GNUxxx is to
promote free
software).
FSF copyright assignment is only a legal "insurance" in case someone
is suing
the developer.
I'll state it quite simply here: Unless your WO can be submitted to
the FSF
and integrated with the existing GSW framework, then I don't believe
that
it should "replace" it as you seem to suggest.
Unfortunately the FLA doesn't support that argument at all since
GNUstep CVS
already (/only) contains non-FLA code, so itself would need to be
contributed
to FSF first.
Notably Manuel also included the NGAntlr library I initially wrote
(we
remember that he claimed in the thread I make no contributions ...)
in
dev-libs/gnustep-web - I never signed any FSF copyright assignment
and the
code still states that this is copyrighted by me (Manuel added
himself).
So copyright assignment is apparently no issue.
Anyway, as I wrote before, if FSF assignment is a requirement, we
won't be
able to share. That copyright assignments are impossible was only a
side note
on that (though your pointers are quite interesting and relevant).
I also did not suggest that SOPE "should" replace GSW, I said that it
is
somewhat obsolete with the LGPL release of SOPE. Opinions may differ.
The most amazing thing wrt gnustep-web I found is that while the
framework
itself is free software, there are apparently *no* free software
applications
based on it! In contrast - gnustepweb.org is advertising the
proprietary
applications and websites as well as the two companies behind
gnustep-web. In
the same run Manuel and David are suggesting that they don't trust me
because
I'm working for a company (which in contrast to their own companies
*only
works on free software*).
I hope you understand that I'm a bit confused about that situation.
Anyway, this is again going into a "rant direction" which we wanted
to avoid
(I ensured to stay to facts nevertheless ;-).
The discussion started out when we talked about the "GNUstep Kits"
project
which in my understanding (unlike core GNUstep CVS) does *not*
require a FSF
assignment (and therefore consideres inclusion of skyrix-xml, which I
would
very welcome).
WRT the web application library for "GNUstep Kits" I would strongly
advise to
make an *unbiased* examination of SOPE. While its sad that so much
work was
already invested in gnustep-web, SOPE is IMHO clearly superior and
provides
far more functionality. Now I'm biased and gstep-web is biased as
well, so we
need unbiased opinions ;-)
To help with such an evaluation the SOPE team suggested to work on
adding
GSWEB compatibility so that existing GSW applications also work with
SOPE.
This would lead to much better factual evaluations on code quality
and
performance.
I have to admit that we are somewhat stuck on this front due to the
lack of
free gnustep-web applications (if someone knows some, please send
pointers!).
best regards,
Helge