Re: draft legal ideas

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Appologies for another long post. Jens it seems we largly agree so not
all of this mail is a direct response to your post. I started with a
response and then ended up on my soap box and kept waffling :)

>   it makes no difference whether they distribute binaries or source; the
>   source is readily available from zynot, and all they distribute would b=
e
>   their modifications and enhancements - that should be their choice

To clarify my concerns regarding derived code distributed as source and
to point out how I see this a being a big and critical difference:

The source that they distribute will *not* be redily available from
zynot. It will be zynot-source combined with their proprietry extensions
which they will undoubtably view as having monetary value in intelectual
property rights - they had to pay zynot for the ability to do this.

As with the SCO vs Linux fiasco you can never garuntee that IP code will
not end up in  GPL codebase. This will always be true. However by giving
zynot customers the ability to 'close up' portions of zynot-source in
their own proprietry 'branch' of parts of the software we are almost
'inviting' this problem to bite us down the line. Imagine a time when
half a dozen or so companies all have and distribute 'closed' versions
of zynot-source in a highly competitive area. Imagine some of them allow
their developers to 'also' spend some of their time working on
zynot-gpl-source. Imagine some of them 'employ' zynot members to add
closed features on their behalf. Now wheras you can argue that a license
would manage all these scenarios my point is that such a license will be
difficult(impossible?) to draft and my concern is that in inviting so
much potential for disaster then some degree of disaster becomes almost
inevitable.
On the other hand in sticking with the GPL you immediately avoid a big
legal quagmire by setting a simple and level playing field for *ALL*
competing business interests.
With regard to the argument that some customers may end up being foul of
the GPL. Well I personally have no simpathy here. They have a
professional responsibility to understang the license terms by which
they use *ANY* piece of software (not just GPL) and so do the developers
they employ.
Moreover I think business understanding of GPL is improving and frankly
it should be part of zynot's mission to 'educate' business users in this
area. Particularly that keeping a 'free' pool of source code 'prevents'
potential legal quagmires and wasted 'competitive' resources allowing
them to focus on their market space.

In fact being that I see zynot as mostly an 'infrastructure' technology
then my view is that businesses will leverage zynot in a similar way
they leverage Linux. By building things on top of it (which may be
proprietary) rather than by selling proprietary versions of it. And this
for me is the crux. Why encourage the sale of proprietary versions? Who
would want or need to do that? And if they did then do we really trust
them?

- Galik

PS.
I did try to be brief but I seem to have a big problem getting off the
soap box once I'm on it :)



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