[Samba] [proposal] Samba Software Foundation

[Martin Pool]

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 21:56:07 +0000, samba testing wrote:

> my offer stands - and will always stand.  if in five minutes, five days,
> five years or fifty years a samba foundation is established
> (irrespective of whether it is recommended by me or anyone else), and
> the conditions i outline _happen_ to be (perhaps even coincidentally)
> met, _then_ all samba related code i have ever written will become
> wholly owned by that foundation.

Luke: whatever your intentions, your offer is meaningless.  It is nonsense
to talk of a copyright assignment that reverts this way or that under
certain conditions.  What you are actually proposing is to grant a non-GPL
licence to use your code, which can be revoked under certain conditions. 
That is incompatible both with the existing GPL, and with the core values
of the community.

(Even if a proprietary licence were acceptable, I'd be extremely leery of
agreeing to one which terminates if I "even think of" breaking it. 
Clearly you are not serious.)

> if someone comes up with a better suggestion that achieves the same goal
> - furthers the goals of achieving better integration between windows and
> unix - i'd be delighted to hear it, and to post an updated offer
> accordingly.

I have a suggestion: make your own project which pursues the goals you
consider important.  You can use Samba code, as long as you strictly
adhere to the licence.  If people think your code is worthwhile or your
strategy is correct, they'll contribute or use it.  If you think
"strategic" code is more important than correct code, run your project
that way and see what happens.  Start a foundation if it makes you happy. 
You have the opportunity to prove us wrong, but you need to do that by
actions, not words.

If you want to talk of respect, respect the Samba team's wishes that you
no longer post to this list, and that they are not interested in
considering contributions with a bizarre revocable licence.

There are a million places on the web where you can expound your theories
on what Samba should do, but this is no longer one of them.  (Luke has a
blog on advogato; anyone interested can read more there.)

Any further postings from your pseudonyms to samba.org before March 15
will be considered net abuse (i.e. unauthorized access to a computer
system). You can reply to me alone (not the lists) if you wish.

-- 
Martin