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Re: Lack of Cygwin contributors? Was: How is textmode/binmode determined ...


On Tue, May 02, 2000 at 12:33:59PM -0800, Kendall Bennett wrote:
>> At 12:18 PM 5/2/00, Charles Hixson wrote:
>> >It seems to me that what is being requested would be accomplished by having
>> >a branch of the tree that was GPL'd, but within which the authors retained
>> >the copyright rather than assigning it to CygWin.  There may be significant
>> >problems with this or not, I wouldn't know.  But this is what I hear being
>> >requested.
>> 
>> Under the GPL, anyone is free to do this.  I don't see why
>> Cygnus/Red Hat would really want to maintain the ensuing mess
>> though. 
>
>Of course not, because then they lose the right to sell commercial 
>licenses.

If I thought there was a great need for this kind of thing, I might
consider it.  I don't know of many situations where a project would
benefit from split development.  There are obvious headaches involved
in that kind of activity.

I'll tell you what, though.  Why not provide your vision of what Cygwin
would be if you were contributing, and maybe my mind will be changed.
If there are all sorts of fertile ideas waiting to be tapped then that
might be a good reason to start a separate tree.

Wait.  Maybe there's a Catch 22 here.  If you provide ideas then we
might use them in our proprietary cygwin offering and you would not be
compensated.  Additionally, since you're not using the product at all,
due to your strong moral stance against proprietary offerings, you probably
don't have much insight into what could be done.

It would probably be best for someone else to start this branch.  I can't
wait to see what kind of innovations will result.  I'm not being sarcastic.
I would really be interested to see what kind of untapped potential is out
there that has been languishing due to our licensing techniques.

cgf

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