Re: TAO license - Debian misinterpretation
Hi,
Santiago wrote:
> This is not a matter of "breaking the standard" [*]
>
> People should be able to modify TAO to conform to *another* standard.
> If they do not have this freedom, TAO is not free enough.
Hmm, what about the GPL (going off on a tangent, I know)? The GPL forces
someone who uses GPLed code fragments to change his software's own
licensing terms otherwise the code fragments can't be used. This doesn't
seem to be "free enough," IMHO. The GPL places one heck of a restriction
on GPLed code. TAO has the "conforming to a standard" restriction, but it
does not disallow anyone from modifying the TAO source as long as it
conforms to the IIOP 1.0 standard. I can't imagine why anyone would want
to deviate from the standard and begin yet another development fork.
Things may be wrong with standard UNIX library APIs yet Linux adheres to
the standard.
> [*] If the standard is good enough, people will not want to use a program
> that does not conform to the standard, so there is no need to write that
> in the license, but if the standard is not good enough and we need a new
> one, then everybody should be able to modify the TAO program to conform to
> the new standard, not only TAO authors.
If a new standard is needed, I am sure the TAO authors would release TAO
with a license that states something similar to current license, i.e. that
adherence to the new standard must be maintained. What is to keep
everyone else besides the TAO authors from modifying TAO to meet the new
standard? Nothing! The TAO authors currently accept patches for TAO from
a great deal of people outside of Doug Schmidt's research group. I don't
understand why you say that everyone should be able to modify TAO when
such a situation already exists. It so happens that patches don't become
official until they go through Doug Schmidt's research group. If this
isn't acceptable perhaps someone should tell Linus he shouldn't be the
only one to make Linux patches official. :)
-Ossama
______________________________________________________________________
Ossama Othman <othman@astrosun.tn.cornell.edu>
58 60 1A E8 7A 66 F4 44 74 9F 3C D4 EF BF 35 88 1024/8A04D15D 1998/08/26
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