Re: licenses revisited

["Chahine M. Hamila" <HALCON11 at terra dot es>]

Well, if  you want to explain those details to Haydar, it seems fine to me since I
don't believe in the concrete value of that clause. That said, I don't think it
would prevent any of those who want to be a pain in our neck to do it. All one has
to do in order to bar half the Arab countries is to respect some U.S. laws, which
MPL (Mozilla) for example seems to have no problem doing despite being considered
both free and open. Will that prevent me from violating any of these clauses in
licenses that deal with that specific U.S. crap? Hell, I'm dealing in my everyday
life with Arab engineers who also happen to be friends, and if I were to respect
those clauses, I would have to cut half my dealings with them. European attitude
so far toward this barring has been to strongly oppose it and ignore it (when it
suits it of course, for its own contracts). The point is, you are right, they are
in any case noise. Their value is simply more political than legal, and as such,
the only courts that would follow these are the courts who are politically
inclined to do so. I feel so strongly about it only as a matter of principle that
in other circumstances would have a real value, more than as a fact that will have
either negative or positive impact on our work.
In fact, if I'm right about my understanding of MPL's provision's in regard to
respect of U.S. laws, Nadim and Moe wouldn't have the right to use Mozilla and
Netscape for example, if we were to respect these clauses... Duh.
Salaam

Nadim Shaikli a *crit :

> --- "Chahine M. Hamila" <HALCON11 at terra dot es> wrote:
> > Words of wisdom Nadim.
> >
> > I would just like to add a point, that if fribidi (for example) was to ever
> > change,
> > 1) we could still base work and make a fork based on anterior versions which
> > would evolve seperately,
> > 2) other projects such as pango, gnome, etc... would probably not base
> > themselves
> > on that library but on another one which would become the standard instead...
>
> Fribidi itself doesn't concern me -- think of the larger picture.  If
> there are going to be licenses baring .il, there will be licenses (if not
> already) baring Arabic countries; if we engage with something that bares
> .il then we should expect to see more licenses baring Arabic countries (.il
> or sweden - I don't care).
>
> Do we want that (no) ? and irrespective how to "spin" this so that we/arabs
> don't get harmed by something that we might be a part of.
>
> One way I can think of -- tell haydar to remove "restriction" and make it a
> statement of purpose of statement of conscious in which he condemns .il's
> actions and views (that way he gets his "noise" out and we don't get any
> lash-back (back-fire)).
>
>  - Nadim
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Great stuff seeking new owners in Yahoo! Auctions!
> http://auctions.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Core mailing list
> Core at arabeyes dot org
> http://arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo/core