Re: localCVS: ae_admin views_partner

["Chahine M. Hamila" <mch at chaham dot com>]

Nadim Shaikli wrote:

> I hope I'm not rocking the boat here, but I don't think I agree with
> this nebulous "social contract" -- no gotcha's from our end, none
> from their end.  I would hate to see a "communist contract" from them
> for instance in which I'd have to go peer over every detail and waste
> time studying it :-)

If it's about PR one could change the name, no problem. It was just inspired by
the Debian name, but we could as well call it the "Arabeyes commitment" for
example. I agree with you "social contract" sounds a bit communist;)
That said, it's not a neboulus:) you really should read the Debian Social
Contract. All it says is more or less we want free software, GPL is okay, BSD
is okay, Apache is okay, so on...

> I know there are strong feelings to the contrary, but for someone that been
> around GNU and shareware and osdn, "social contract" doesn't mean much to me
> and I'd only guess to others as well.

Give it another name then:) Social Contract is not a license. It is just an
explanation of license policies, kind of like this email. Call it "Arabeyes
Views Partners" if you want;)

> How do we protect OUR interests in having "Free Software" vs. "Open Source"
> and "Social Contract" vs. "GPL-friendly" ??

Open Source is not okay. Take a look at the Sun Community thing. The last thing
you would call it is free software. We're not even talking about free like in
money, but freedom of develoment. Open Source only means you can read the
source, more or less.
"Social Contract" doesn't mean anything by itself, it's just a name, you can
call it arabeyes-license-policy.html, arabeyesblurb.xml, whatever. The point
is, GPL-friendly is not okay for everyone. It is not even acceptable for many
in the BSD community, which is just almost as important in the free software
world as the GNU community. GPL is incompatible with many free licenses. In
other words, you can't limit yourself to one license or those friendly to it.
You would dismiss too many software that you probably use on a daily basis, and
too many potential good developpers. That includes Apache, Artistic (the
original license of Perl) and many, many others. Whatever name you want to put
on it, there has to be a stated policy that says "A license that allows this
and this is okay for us, a license that doesn't is not", without limiting
oneself to one kind of license. Again, good point I think about the fact the
name "Social Contract" doesn't sound cool. Just name it "Arabeyes License
Policy" then.

Salaam,
Chahine