Re: Corel Lawsuit
On Sat, Nov 27, 1999 at 12:12:16AM -0500, Gavriel State wrote:
> I'm not sure whether I should be posting this message. Spokesperson isn't
> my real job (I'm an engineer), but the people whose real job it is may not
> be able to respond on debian.devel in time to avert the weekend flamefest
> I'm dreading. Though perhaps part of the problem has been that people
> have been hearing from too many spokespeople and not enough engineers.
> Regardless, what follows should in no way be construed as any sort of
> official Corel position. It's just me talking.
And that disclaimer probably captures the nature of the problem in
its essence.
You're the folks doing the work, and you're doing it with Corel's backing,
but you don't have the final say.
The situation is perfectly understandable, of course. But, on the
legal side, it seems as if there are changes which must be made, and
that a certain amount of pressure must be applied on Corel to make these
changes happen.
Corel's legal dept. *should* be dealing with these issues before deploying
legal requirements. Nobody is happy that outsiders are having to deal
with Corel licensing issues after the fact -- not those outsiders,
not Corel employees, not people who hear about it.
> I'm one of several dozen people working on open source projects at
> Corel. As I see the postings here and on slashdot claiming that
> we're trying to 'pull one over' on the community, or that we're just
> freeloaders and clueless to boot, I wonder whether people even know
> what we've actually contributed? We've been working *really* hard
> trying to get Linux in the hands of the average desktop user, and
> we've released *everything* we've done under open source licenses
> (much of it under the GPL, some under our version of the MPL, and some
> under the BSDish WINE license):
...
> It's incredibly painful to see our intentions misperceived as
> they have been. We're trying to make and improve free software,
> and to forge relationships with the wider community. Now that our
> engineering team is coming back from post-shipping vacations, we're
> starting the process of integrating our desktop work with KDE 2.0,
> and improving our packaging structure to improve compatibility with
> potato, etc.
And you've been doing great work.
But, as you've indicated above, you don't have the final say in how
that work is deployed.
I know this isn't your job. But: if there's anything you can do to
get your legal department to invite comment on future potential debian
licenses on debian-legal, before they're deployed, I think everyone
concerned would be happier.
> BTW, we're working on an infrastructure for improving
> our ties to the wider community. It's not ready yet,
> but when it's up there will be a link to it at:
> http://linux.corel.com/products/linux_os/opensource_development.htm
I'm curious, but I guess I'll have to wait and see what will be there.
Thanks,
--
Raul
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