Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2000 22:32:48 -0400 (EDT) From: Chuck Robey <chuckr@picnic.mat.net> To: papowell@astart.com Cc: drosih@rpi.edu, imp@village.org, andrews@technologist.com, arch@FreeBSD.ORG, nik@FreeBSD.ORG, sheldonh@uunet.co.za, will@almanac.yi.org Subject: Re: Bringing LPRng into FreeBSD? - License Issues Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0007072217210.71063-100000@picnic.mat.net> In-Reply-To: <200007060232.TAA23720@h4.private>
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On Wed, 5 Jul 2000 papowell@astart.com wrote: > I am surprised at the concern of the licensing issue, so let me explain > the development of the LPRng code and how the license issues evolved. > If you are not interested in the following topics skip them. But please > take the time to read the last one. You've written a nice set of huge responses, but it seems to me that you're laboring under a misconception. I might be wrong (and if I'm wrong I'm sure you'll correct me) but it seems to me that you think that the best utility must get brought into the sources. That's false. We have ports, and LPRng is one of them; many really nice pieces of software are. Many of these pieces of software are unquestionably better than the one that's provided in our main tree, but aren't there for a variety of reasons: license is one of them, but also size, difficulty in configuring, maintenance, and other ones. If we can't get you to release LPRng under a BSD license, and our present lpd *does* have such a license, then I don't think I can make too good a case that LPRng is not better than lpd, but I can really easily make a case that bringing in LPRng is going to hurt an important segment of FreeBSDers (commercial users of FreeBSD). Not bringing in LPRng isn't going to hurt much, since a nice port is available via ports/sysutils/LPRng. Can you see this? It's NOT a question of Having/NotHaving LPRng, we'll have it either way. It's a question of Hurting/NotHurting an important set of FreeBSD users, without making anyone at all do without LPRng. If you're a commercial user, who (for many reasons) doesn't want to have to have an on-staff lawyer every time a commit is done, you'd understand. Trying to give support under conditions where your customers can change things, or where you couldn't, would be a nightmare too. =============================================================== <Personal rant> On top of that, and this is a purely personal feeling, I think needing a banner to print out every time your software starts up, well, that's a bit much too. Sources, yes. Requiring your copyright to be in some very available file, that's fine too. God, things would look pretty stupid if all of our utilities decided they needed to print a banner (even if it's a one or two liner). Why shouldn't the writer of "echo" get a banner too? </Personal rant> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include C & Java programming, FreeBSD, chuckr@picnic.mat.net | electronics, communications, and signal processing. New Year's Resolution: I will not sphroxify gullible people into looking up fictitious words in the dictionary. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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