[om-list] Re: MTShell and 4C

[Mark Butler]

Tom asked:

Would I need to change the licences of only those source files written
by people who agree to the change?

I answered:

"These are the only licenses you can change.  The others would have to
be re-written to stay under their previous terms, due to the copyright
privileges of the contributors."

I meant to say:

You can only change the license of specific files when all the authors
who have made material contributions to that file consent to the
license change, either explicitly, or implicitly through the terms of
the previous license.  For example, BSD licensed code can be
re-licensed under more restrictive conditions without the explicit
consent of the original authors, provided terms of the previous
license (credit mostly) are followed.  The MozPL and GPL are designed
not to allow significant license modifications without full consent of
all the authors, however, in an attempt to keep open source code open
forever.

- Mark




> 
> > Would Mark and other OM people
> > be agreeable to supporting an MPL-ed project?
> 
> I would be.
> 
> > I think I want to do an MPL /
> > Loss Leader combination.  I'm thinking of maybe making the shell proprietary
> > and most of the original utilities open-source.
> 
> No outsider is going to be motivated to write an open source utility
> that requires a proprietary shell unless that shell has already
> achieved market dominance.
> 
> > (Part of the shell design
> > will necessarily be, in effect, MPL-ed, because any interface protocol stuff
> > for co-ordinating shell and utility found in an MPL-ed utility must be open
> > to all.)
> 
> Open protocol / API standards are a related, but very different issue
> than open source code licensing.  You can have fully proprietary
> components that interoperate using well specified, open protocols. The
> best real world example is the Internet, which is based on hundreds of
> such protocols documented in freely available specifications called
> RFCs.
> 
> > Some of the utilities will have to be proprietary, because they
> > include TSF translators (involving the proprietary TF binary file format).
> > Or should I make all utilities proprietary and the shell open-source?
> 
> I recommend at least one open source shell implementation with trivial
> utilities open source as well.  You could make the open source shell
> have a plain vanilla command line user interface and market a
> proprietary GUI IDE with a debugger and other advanced features.  The
> principle here is not to try to make a profit from every casual user,
> but rather from serious customers that need first class functionality
> and support and are willing to pay for it.
> 
> If you end up with two or three other companies in the same market,
> that is no tragedy.  Small companies with three or four programmers
> run circles around monoliths like IBM and Microsoft on a daily basis -
> that is why large companies like to buy them out.  Cisco is literally
> a conglomeration of hundreds of narrow networking startups that were
> acquired and merged with the parent company.  This is a very healthy
> process because startups are much better at innovation and large
> companies are much more stable for the years after the initial burst
> of creativity.  This is desirable because serious customers need to
> depend on the availability of and support for mission critical
> components for decades.
> 
> - Mark
> 
> _______________________________________________
> om-list mailing list
> om-list at onemodel.org
> http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/om-list

-- 
Mark Butler	       ( butlerm at middle.net )
Software Engineer  
Epic Data Systems              
(801)-451-4583