On Thu, 2001-10-04 at 11:20, Ray Plzak wrote:
But it doesn't ensure that you will incorporate them either. The bottom line is that where the resource controller makes the final decision based upon the organization's resource availability and its impact on the contributors to that resource, that will be the primary consideration and not necessarily those of the global users of the product.
These issues would probably go away if a GNU-like license were applied. Maybe it's an idea to copyleft the whole bunch? The current license on (almost all) source files says: ... use, copy, modify, and distribute this software ... for lawful non-commercial purposes and without fee is hereby granted, ... The copyright owner is USC. Now, I don't think anybody has ever given much thought about the "lawful non-commercial" use, but unless I am mistaken it clearly prohibits the majority of ISPs to use this software. An explicit copylefting of this project would allow anyone to modify and distribute the package, keep the sources available and open, and hence allow a fair degree of democratic control over its evolution. If, for example, enough people want a set of changes that (hypothetically speaking) RIPE NCC weren't willing to implement, these people could take the sources, create their own modifications and make it available to the community again. Yes, we might see diverging implementations, but at least everyone will have the opportunity to see their need-to-have features implemented. Cheers, Steven