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

[Dan Kuykendall]

Christian Böttger wrote:

> G'day!
>
> > They don't want communicate with the community. 
>
> That's plain wrong, otherwise noone would write anything here from our
> company. 

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.

> > 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".

> > 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.

> > We ask them, to spend some money for development to the 
> > developers, but they don't want. When I want i found a way. 
>
> Oh well. AFAIK someone (I don't know whether is was you, honestly) asked
> just to pass on most of the money. This is not possible. But, e.g. we had
> open job positions. People could have applied. And: in the case parts of our
> work go into the phpGW community: then "money" in form of work has found
> it's way into the project; which it wouldn't otherwise. But you may accept
> or not that we simply can't just take orders.

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).

> > Greetings to probiz. Follow OSS rules and not YOUR COMMERCIAL 
> > INTEREST 

I dont know what "rules" they have broken.

> Please ask Richard Stallmann or anyone else from FSF or FSF Europe about OSS
> and business. From all their statements, that's not a contradiction at all.
> Commercial companies *must* follow commercial interests, otherwise they will
> cease to exist. OSS (the FSF prefers "Free Software") is about the
> accessability of source code and the freedom of the *user* of the software
> to do what they want with the source. It' not about not making money, and
> it's not anti-business.

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

> But well, if this opionion uttered by Reiner is the opinion of the majority
> of the contributors and the core team, and all agree that they don't want
> any code or contribution from our company at all and will not have a look at
> further (code or other) contributions, well then just say it and we will be
> off. Mind you that the GPL would not stop anyone from forking of a new
> project under a different name.

Its certainly not an opinion shared by me.

> 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
> my count as "following OSS rules". 

This follows the rules as I see it.
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.

Dan