[sldev] Upcoming viewer releases?

[Dzonatas]

Dale Glass wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 29, 2007 at 08:18:54AM -0700, Dzonatas wrote:
>   
>> It may be true that there is a legal requirement, but that requirement 
>> falls outside of the Open Source Definition. Open Source carries the the 
>> virtue of being non-discriminatory.
>>     
>
> Technically, it doesn't.
>
> If I understood correctly, this agreement is only needed for LL to
> accept your patches. If you don't sign it, you can treat it as GPL2
> (which obviously complies with the "Open Source" definition), except LL
> won't merge your patches into the official viewer.
>
> AFAIK, "Open Source" includes nothing that makes the original creator to
> have to accept your patches.
>
> Also, it's my understanding that GNU requires transferring copyright to
> the FSF. That's how they manage to be able to switch all their software
> to the next GPL version when they need.
>
>   

There absolutely no need for LL to have you sign a contribution in order 
for LL to produce a Open Source version of the viewer. There is only a 
need to sign the contribution if LL wishes to use your contribution 
under conditions they can re-license the code completely. At this point, 
there is no effort by LL to produce a version of the viewer with 
contributions that are meant only for the Open Source viewer.

Being that LL has kept control of the protocol internal, any external 
attempts to create an Open Source viewer is still behind due to that 
dependency.

You seem to understand the waste of time it is to contribute code that 
never gets accepted by LL, but do you realize that it could still be 
accepted in the Open Source viewer.

Those that may never want to sign a contribution agreement should be 
given the chance to contribute to the Open Source viewer.

At this time, the Sandbox edition was/is headed that way as a Open 
Source viewer, but the dependency has left it more as a test bed for 
patches.

-- 
Power to Change the Void
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