RE: [Phpgroupware-developers] Re: Standard source code header and php Documentor

[Christian Böttger]

G'day!

 
> I have seen emails on this list from the probiz people, so I 
> dont know  why you would say they are not communicating with us.

Thanks!

 
> >>They have a business plan for what they receive money. 
> > 
> > What's wrong about it?
> 
> I second that. Whats wrong about making money with Free Software. 
> Stallman repeats over an over "Free as in Freedom, not as in beer".

ACK.
 
> >>that what they do it's not a community project. They want 
> >>that the "OSS developers" agree with their "commercial" product. 
> > 
> > Not correct. That is your interpretation, not our 
> intention. Our intention
> > is to give as much work back into the phpGW project as 
> possible. It's of
> > course up to the phpGW project whether they accept the work or not.
> 
> No problem here.

much appreciated.

As I pointed out in another mail: it will most probably happen that a
commercial customers wants us to make some specific motifications (under GPL
and to be published) which will not fit into the general phpGW line and
scope. We will not reject such a job. But we will still offer the results to
the phpGW project. If the community (better: the maintainers of the modules
involved, I guess) wants the code, fine. If not, fine as well. In that case
we would have to maintain e.g. a patch set against the latest stable
version, but that would still be public.

 
> Money is not going to normally be "donated" in such a fashion 
> as writing a check to us (thru the FSF). Its almost always done by way of
having 
> paid employees write code and assign the copyrights to us 
> (thru the FSF).

That was my impression as well since years. That was the way we wanted to
contribute.

> >>Greetings to probiz. Follow OSS rules and not YOUR COMMERCIAL 
> >>INTEREST 
> 
> I dont know what "rules" they have broken.

Nor do I, but some people seem to think we have. I still plead innocent in
this matter.

> Correct, and in fact for-profit corporations can actually be held 
> accountable by law for NOT trying to be profitable for the 
> shareholders.

Our shareholders would definitely get very angry we would stop trying to
make money...

> Its certainly not an opinion shared by me.

Thank you so much!

> > We are well prepared and much in favour of assigning any 
> phpGW related code
> > from us to the FSF or FSF Europe, whichever may be the 
> correct address. That
> > may count as "following OSS rules". 
> 
> This follows the rules as I see it.

Thanks again.

> The only "rules" we should hold are to not have our CVS updated with 
> stuff the community doesnt want, and to have copyrights assigned for 
> anything put in CVS.

We don't have problems with the CVS access; as long as code submitted
through the patch submit mechanism is actually evaluated (not necessarily
incorporated). Obviously it would be nice for our developers personally to
be listed as contributors (which does not necessarily incluide CVS write
access), but that's another story.

For the copyrights:
there is one unresolved issue: there is no such thing as assigning a
copyright (in the sense defined by US laws) in continental Europe, the legal
system is quite different (only various degrees of usage rights can be
assigned to someone else, not the "copyright" itself). I'm not a lawyer, so
I can't decide whether signing a copyright agreement with the FSF North
America would actually hold any legal power at all for people from Germany
(and France, e.g.). There is another form of agreement from the FSF Europe
(FLA) which fits the legal systuation in continental Europe; but again I
have no idea whether this would have to be assigned to the FSF Europe or the
FSF North America and what kind of implications it might have if either
different branches of the FSF are involved or if several diffrent agreements
are signed. I have approached the FSF Europe last week on this topic (we
need clarification anyway for other things as well), but I have not received
any response so far.  

Regards

Christian

-- 
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