Re: Bidi-less Applications Patching Policy

[Munzir Taha <munzirtaha at newhorizons dot com dot sa>]

On Yau al-Thulatha 12 Rabi` al-Thaani 1425 08:07 pm, Mohammed Elzubeir wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 12:43:32PM -0400, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> > NO NO NO NO.  People here always confuse LGPL with GPL.  The way
> > to go is to convince people to use an external library
> > (compile-time optional, or even run-time optional).  So, you go
>
> The problem, Behdad, is that we have the following situation:
>
>   + eager developer willing to spit code by the second

No, this great developer is asking you what do you want him to program today. 
You can guide him to your utmost priorities.

Suggestion #1: we should have priorities which is clear in our ToDo list. It 
should be optional but it should be there.

>   + bottleneck of politics and persuasion
>
> I can tell you that I _personally_ would rather never see anything but
> FriBiDi in existence. I don't know how many other share my view, but
> that's how I see it. The more bidi libraries out there the more of a
> problem it could become.
>
>
> Then, you have cases like PuTTY where it was more than just a license
> issue.. it was a matter of policy to not used shared libraries. What do
> we do here? We really had no choice.

Again priorities. Our choice should be to support the majority of software 
before the minority, specific, cases. I am rather sure after an informative 
discussion Ahmed can see what threat minibidi can cause to GPL-compatible 
licenses. It's not his fault at all. It's our fault not to be aware of this 
from the beginning. Or may be its Behdad fault (sorry behdad) to say some 
harsh words that pushed Ahmed to consider elevating minibidi to a competing 
state.

Suggestion #2: Ahmed should be asked to consider cooperating with Behdad on 
solving all bidi/shaping issues in fribidi. This should be discussed and a 
convincing resolution should be found. (sorry for these should's)
A significant unique capability on Fribidi that would persuade developers to 
use it over minibidi should be there and should be known to every one here. I 
would also like to know why fribidi will continue as an LGPL not a GPL if we 
would have a hack like minibidi

> > and give them an immediate option called miniBidi, so why should
> > they ever accept another option?  What you are missing is the
>
> You are right. That is why the whole "policy" thing was born. To say,
> look, here is fribidi. They say, noway.. we say, hey, Behdad, these guys
> need a little sweet talking, you got 2 weeks to do it.. (surely we will
> help).. 2 weeks up, they are not budging.. stalemate. Well, we take
> minibidi out. That's the whole idea.

Come on! You are speaking as if you are hiding minibid in your pocket and you 
can handle it if and only if someone asked you for it. It will be on the open 
air. The real world scenario will go like this: closed source projects will 
use minibidi without asking you and without giving back something and even 
without your knowledge.

> > I'm up to clear my relation to Arabeyes sometime next week.
> > It's more about the policies.  Mine is to contribute to Free
> > Software (as defined by http://www.fsf.org/), while Arabeyes' is
> > apparently not.

> > > Even cooler ;) You know I love MIT/BSD style licenses ;)
> >
> > That's the root of our disagreement ;).
>
> That's a personal preference -- has nothing to do with
> Arabeyes/*bidi/etc.

> > > Behdad, Ahmed, do you think we can go like this?
> > We already are.

This is one of the examples I felt you are closing the discussion without 
giving good reasons. Elzubair, don't take it personally, i am just saying 
this because I know you won't say something bad ;)
but wait...
the thread is already hot and it was suggested to speak frankly rather than 
being obscure.
Suggestion #3: harsh and unjustifiable words should not be rejected by all 
members, especially core, whatever the situation is.

Suggestion #3: Arafat should be asked to change his tone. The "I used to be 
like this and people know me" attitude is not acceptable. This is just in 
case you are interested in finding an answer to the question why do you want 
to leave. Actually if it's not something pending that I want to contribute to 
Arabeyes, I would have left by now. Thanks Ossama for his reply!

If you don't understand what I mean take a look at:
http://lists.arabeyes.org/archives/doc/2004/May/msg00281.html
see this: "ما تقوله أنت هو التخلف"
!!!

>Mohammed Elzubeir wrote:
> It will be under the MIT license (http://www.x.org/Downloads_terms.html)
> which by the way includes the sentence:
> 'Except as contained in this notice, the name of a copyright holder shall 
> not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other
> dealings in this Software without prior written authorization of the
> copyright holder.' and is regarded by GNU as more or less equivalent to the
> revised BSD license.

If that is the MIT license what's this?
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php

May be MIT has used various licenses in the past but nowadays MIT is:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy 
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal 
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights 
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell 
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is 
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all 
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

Am I wrong?

> Even cooler ;) You know I love MIT/BSD style licenses ;)

The difference between one who wants to lend a hand to all guys even evil ones 
and the attitude of one who lends a hand only to good guys. I prefer the 
latter if ever possible.


-- 
Munzir Taha  PGP Key available
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Telecommunications and Electronics Engineer
Linux Registered User #279362 at http://counter.li.org
Mandrake Club member
Maintainer of Mandrake Arabization Project Status (MAPS)
http://www.arabeyes.org/download/documents/distros/mdkarabicsupport-en/
CIW Designer, ICDL, MOUS
New Horizons CLC
Riyadh, SA