Re: I think the AL needs a rewrite

Chris Nandor wrote:
>
>At 10:41 -0600 2000.09.11, Tom Christiansen wrote:
> >I suggest that one explore the answer to this question:
> >
> >    What does one wish to prohibit people from doing?
>
>That is an excellent question.  Bradley Kuhn asked we hold off on more
>discussion until he can release some RFCs tomorrow.  I will put aside other
>related discussions, but this is the one discussion, which Rush proposed,
>which I don't think has any need to wait.
>
Your answers to this explain a lot!

If I may summarize.

It seems that you are asking for better recognition than
the BSD license supplies.

I am asking for some protection against an Embrace, Extend,
Extinguish attack.
>
>In broad, inexact, and incomplete terms:
>
>I wish to prohibit people from presenting my work as their own.
>
>I wish to prohibit people from releasing modified versions of my work that
>do not clearly, without question, note the modifications and
>incompatibilies, so they are not misrepresented as my work, while they are
>not.
>
>I wish to prohibit people from distributing my work in any form without
>prominent, working pointers to the complete, free of charge, unmodified
>versions.
>
So you would not like to see something called "perlex" or
something called "oraperl" distributed with no instructions
on how to get "perl"?  By contrast I would not mind that.
>
>Let me disagree (?) with Ben, who wrote:
> >I wish to prohibit people from distributing something that they call
> >Perl which differs significantly from Perl and has changes which Perl
> >cannot choose to reincorporate into the standard version.
>
>I was going to disagree, but then I just decided I don't know what this
>means.  What I don't understand is this thing about incorporating changes
>into the Standard Version.  Why does it matter?

Because if you are going to embrace and extend, I want the
extension distributed on terms where the maintainer of the
standard version does not have to play catch-up if you had
some good ideas.  And I don't want your extension to wind
up in due course of time under a license which leaves you
with essentially absolute control.

This is also why I am focused on examples from Sun and
Microsoft that fit into attacks of this nature.

Does that clarify the underlying philosophical difference?

Cheers,
Ben
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at 
http://profiles.msn.com.