Re: [GSWHackers] Re: OGo/GNUstep cooperation Re: Re[2]: Frameworks integration

[Helge Hess]

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
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