Re: Discussing Hayder's Proposal

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

Nadim Shaikli a *crit :

> There is value in having hijri, irrespective of the small/large amount of
> people using it.

In Tunisia we only use miladi for official stuff. But the hijri is widely used for
cultural/religious/traditional activities, so having it is definitely important.

>
> We need to talk about the donations issue (now that its online). We need
> to get the word out there (that $10 ain't gonna cut it - I'm planning to
> donate about $100, but I want to use it to our advantage in getting the
> word out - ie. use it as a ploy :-).

Have you decided what you are going to do with the donation? Sorry if I missed
anything...

> I really think we should look into VIM's license and try to do something
> similar to it (instead of alienating bastards and oppressors, lets help
> those that need it by raising awareness - think positive, NOT negative).
> I'm thinking something along the lines of putting into words the humanitarian
> needs of various regions in the world (strictly on humanitarian needs; which
> we can change from project to project to note various regions in the world
> and include a URL or two of organizations that help in those regions.)

1000000% agreed:) I would be very much for making charityware licenses for those
projects we start. Other projects will have to respect the license in which the
project was started of course...That said, in the specific case of the HPL, the
export limitations seem to me very natural, please see my previous mail.

>
> Furthermore, I have two concerns with all this Haydar biz,
>
> 1. He wants his name on everything - ego issue and possible future problems ?
>    I know it might be innocent, but you gotta wonder (if I were to do a linux
>    distro I would never think to put 'nadim' on it - even though I realize
>    that both nadim & haydar are not so common names).

Well, that's common usage in the business world. And the computer world doesn't
escape it. Dell, Hewlett-Packard, 99% of the Japanese companies, Amiga's TOS, are
a few examples among zillions out there. I don't see anything wrong with it. There
could be ego problems indeed (see Torvalds, "I am Linus and I am your God", sic)
but that's only a possibility so why not give the benefit of the doubt? And even
if it was the case, he's got the right to it, he's the one putting his $$$ in it
after all, and if there's a problem, we can cut it. In fact, the guy seems rather
generous for wanting to invest his business money and produce everyone of his
software in free licenses, when in fact he could have no return, or worse, serve
competition.

> 2. He, I hope, realizes that others WILL use his work to create their own
>    distribution (even if we don't touch the files he uploads) - its noted
>    between the lines on that file we sent (more so in the new view_partner
>    file - I will make it very obvious next); I would be more comfortable if
>    we noted that outright to him - again so that there are no surprises.

I fully agree here.

Salaam,
Chahine