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Comment by md8z | Hacker News Reader

I am not trying to score points for any side, all of these projects can and do share code when it's practical and useful to do so. There is no "exclusivity", I'm sure you know that most of these licenses in use are compatible with each other. The end result is that we are already unwittingly on the same team, it took me a while to realize it but that's the whole reason things like Github and such have taken off. I'd love to discuss your experiences with that as a lawyer if you have any interesting stories, but I would have to ask you to please avoid the hostilities, that doesn't help when trying to fix issues. We both have the same access to the same code.

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When Gnome stops being hostile to people who want to modify it in the original spirit -- not necessarily just letter, but SPIRIT -- of free/open source, I'll stop being hostile.

I'm not trying to "fix issues." I'm trying to point out that, sure, Gnome may be technically following the rules, but the entire project is being a collective jerk about it.

Now, we can go deeper on why -- I have no reason to believe individual developers are jerks. I understand there there's money and influence and (cargo-culting) pressure from large companies involved.

But presently - Gnome is a collective putting out a product that is harmful to the environment -- not in an ecological way, but one that reinforces bad ideas about how to make software, aka "only do the bare minimum to comply with the license, otherwise try to dominate via whatever means possible."

I don't know what you mean spirit. To me the spirit has always been "here's some code, do what you want with it" i.e. the exact opposite of what you're saying. I think you may have some missed expectations, I can't understand how you'd perceive that as being dominating or what you mean by someone being a jerk. Both you and I have the same access.

Edit: In my experience, pointing out how someone is a jerk doesn't really help in open source either. That usually just causes them to become defensive and only increases the hostility. Since the code is open it's much better to just fix it for yourself and not worry about what someone else thinks. That is, if you think the situation is truly unrecoverable. If not, then it's better to set aside your differences and work it out.

I'd say "learn your history?" This all came about because of Richard Stallman et al, who absolutely were not "here's some code, do what you want with it."

They were "We have a good thing with this Unix deal and how we do it, we share freely, backwards AND FORWARD. How might we continue this in a wider fashion; knowing that some might be inclined to take and not give back?"

And thus, the GPL was born. MIT-style licenses are fine in some cases, but you're working of the back of Linux, and that's GPL territory.

I know who Richard Stallman is, I've met him several times and I used to volunteer for the FSF. The GPL says that the user is allowed to share modified versions with other users. It does not say that the original author is required to accept some modifications into their version. If you don't believe me then the GPL FAQ has a bit more information about this: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.en.htm...

"Some have proposed alternatives to the GPL that require modified versions to go through the original author. As long as the original author keeps up with the need for maintenance, this may work well in practice, but if the author stops (more or less) to do something else or does not attend to all the users' needs, this scheme falls down. Aside from the practical problems, this scheme does not allow users to help each other."

It's pretty explicitly spelled out here that it is absolutely what they meant, it wouldn't work at all if it wasn't "here's some code, do what you want with it."

If someone is trying to get you to take a case along the lines, I would have to say don't take it, it's probably not going to be a winner.

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