Re: The FreeRDP fork

On Tue, 15 Mar 2011, Marc-André Moreau wrote:

> May I insist on the fact that "open source" concerns much more than just source code? The "community" aspect of it is as
> important as the source code, if not more. Open source goes nowhere without a healthy developer community. Kill the
> community, and you kill the project with it, that's it.

I agree, I know this very well, but the thing is that with our limited 
resources, we have tried building the rdesktop community the best we can. 
I have sent many emails to Matt and asking him to add new developers. But 
without administrator access, I couldn't do it myself.

The most difficult part is keeping Open Source projects healthy over a 
long period of time. People and organizations may be active for only a 
brief period of time, then disappears. Many students are active when they 
are studying at some university, but when they graduate, they leave the 
community.

It's more funny and exciting to start new projects but what the community 
as a whole needs is really more of long term thinking.


> Yes, I know, this was expected. Apple is trying hard to exclude Open Source. There's a war out there. I see no reason
> why we should surrender.
> 
> Oh, wait, aren't you producing commercial software, ThinLinc? Is all of 
> it contributed back to the open source community?

ThinLinc consists of perhaps 80% open source software and 20% proprietary 
code, plus documentation, services etc. For the open source parts, we are 
working closely with the upstream projects and are always shipping the 
pristine (or close to) upstream software. We are also including the source 
code on the product CD.

You could say that we are in the "Open Source" camp rather than the "Free 
Software" camp. We are pragmatic and believes that commercial products are 
OK, especially if they allows us to produce more Open Source. This is what 
we are doing when we are contributing back to the rdesktop, TigerVNC, 
OpenSC etc projects.

The Apple App Store terms are too limiting, however.


>  I'm not saying it is wrong, because it is perfectly fine, but what I 
> find a bit ironic here are your priorities. First, Apple has not 
> declared a war on open source, it will allow GPLv2 applications to be 
> distributed on its App Store. The problem is that the GPLv2 says that 
> you cannot impose further restrictions, such as those imposed by the App 
> Store itself. For these reasons, some people have been filing complaints 
> against GPLv2 applications in the App Store - complaints from the GPLv2 
> developers themselves in the case of VLC.

I know, and I think they are right.


> We're not even talking about linking proprietary code into GPL code, 
> we're simply talking about distribution GPL code on a platform that 
> imposes certain restrictions. No matter how open the source code is, if 
> the platform itself imposes ANY further restrictions, it won't be 
> considered suitable for it. Should we remove all GPL applications from 
> all platforms imposing any form of restriction?

My opinion is that any platform where you are only allowed to run 
binaries which have been signed by the vendor is too restrictive. Such a 
platform is not compatible with GPL.


> The irony here is that if we compare imposing certain restrictions such 
> as with the App Store and building a commercial product out of GPL 
> software, I think building a commercial product out of GPL software 
> might just come first if you ever want to consider it "bad".

Commercial software is commercial and Open Source is Open Source. One 
problem with the App Store model is that if you distribute Open Source 
apps through it, users would be running Open Source software but with many 
of the Open Source rights taken away from them.


> It should be possible to provide the same interface by providing a stub library. This small glue code can then have a
> different license.
> 
> If that is all it takes, why even bother with GPL? Let's just use a license that allows better and more lightweight
> interfaces, period. Come on, you're making commercial software out of rdesktop, how is that even supposed to hold? "I want
> people to be forced to use technically inferior ways to interface with my code, because they will interface with it anyway?"

You have to consider the whole picture. There's a reason why GPL is still 
one of the most popular licenses.

Rgds, 
---
Peter Åstrand		ThinLinc Chief Developer
Cendio AB		http://www.cendio.com
Wallenbergs gata 4
583 30 Linköping	Phone: +46-13-21 46 00

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