Re: views_partner

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

Nadim Shaikli wrote:


> I think the point is not so much the name - but the insistence on something
> that is NOT very popular or well-known -- I would be much more comfortable
> if we state the following "GPL-friendly, BSD-friendly, Apache-friendly -
> open/free source friendly, everything-friendly" instead of 'Arabeyes
> Commitment'.  That's much cleaner and simpler to comprehend.

Nadim, I really am under the impression we're talking about each other. Nadim, I
agree with you. What you are just saying is what I was trying to explain you. If
you think there is still something I don't agree with you on that part, then you
convinced me and I agree with you now:)

>
> I simply don't think it would be appropriate to hand people a link to go
> read to understand were we stand -- we are part of the MAINSTREAM "open
> source" movement (as you and I understand it - no funny SUN biz) and there
> is nothing peculiar about our vision/stance -- that needs to be in bold.

Free software is more what we are part of. If you want to specify that wed are
part of the free software movement, then yes, we are. We are part of the Open
Source movement, true, but we don't accept any open source addition. This is not
just about Sun, but about the NPL, the QPL, the Apple Open Source thing, and many
other such licenses on which the industry is now surfing. Nadim, I am not being a
purist here, I can     assuredly tell you there are zillions out there who know
about this, and lack of precision will either make us look a bit laxists or
amateurs in what we do.

> We are shackling ourselves because of other people's/company's greed
> and deceit - Sun might have bent the rules enough to where people
> are now starting to use new "labels", but again, personally, until
> those labels become more mainstream I'd stay clear away from them.
> I realize that what you note is more protection for "us", but I'm
> coming from the angle of people's understanding (and my fear of
> alienating them).

No, no, this is about being accurate. We won't accept things that are not free
software, things that restrict other programmers' freedom to the benefit of
others. You would alienate most developers of the free software world. Sun
actually didn't invent it Nadim, it has started years ago, when free software and
open source were more or less equivalent, making both labels used indiscrimantely,
and free software started gaining press difusion. But Nadim, this is not the case
anymore today, and it is known by most free developers, nerds, geeks, zealots, and
the kind of people that can DO something. It is not about names. We are stating a
policy about licenses or are we not? If we are, then we have to state it as I (and
you) mentioned above. If not, then we should leave the whole page out, and not
even mention GPL because we definitely do not favor GPL or any given free license
over the others.

> The way I view this - get 100 people into a room that have used linux/unix
> and surf the net abit (slashdot, linuxtoday, freshmeat) and you ask them
> about "social contract" or "Arabeyes Commitment" or "Free Software" or
> "Open Source Software" and what will their response be -- the percentage
> of them knowing where you stand and what you are all about ?  I might be
> naive (and silly) in this, but we are catering to newbies to some extent
> and as such I don't want to hit them up with semi NEW rules (licenses).

People who surfed slashdot on a regular basis definitely DO know about this, and
there are chances we'd look as I told you if we are not precise here. Nadim,
forget about the label stuff, we can completely eliminate it, this is not what
matters at all. I don't know how I should rephrase this so we understand each
other. This is NOT about creating a new license. This is about saying "if you want
to develop something for Arabeyes, then your license will have to meet minimal
requirements". This is about fixing limits about what we are accepting. It seems
most of us agree here that limiting ourselves to, say, "if you want to develop
something for Arabeyes, then your license will have to be GPL" is not the right
way to go, because you'd flush half every linux distribution down the toilets, and
most BSD distros will be out as well. We also agree that we're not working for
other companies, which dismisses more open source licenses that you seem to think
there is. So there, either we say the "if you want to develop something for
Arabeyes, then your license will have to meet minimal requirements" and specify
what these minimal requirements are, or we don't bring the license issue at all.

> Alas, I've said all I can -- I know we won't convince each other, and this
> is a group democratic effort, let's come to a consensus and move forward.

Nadim, I think we do agree each with each other, I am more of the opinion that
we're just talking past each other.

Salaam,
Chahine