BitKeeper license critic

[MJ Ray]

Joerg Schilling <schilling at fokus.gmd.de> wrote:
>>IANAL, so I'm wary of agreeing to these "click contracts".  If you read the
>>terms (the link to which appears *after* the accept button on the page), you
>>are agreeing to their right to charge you a fee in the future.
> ... And I thought that people from UK should have no problems to understand texts
> written in english :-(

Please, don't reopen that thread.  I am reading what is written, not what
I would like to see there.

> 	Sorry, but if you don't _like_ to understand I cannot help.
> 
> So I suspect that you reject GPL too because it does not prevent the
> Author from charging for later versions. 

Aha!  *Here* is my point.  The Open Group terms do not specify charging only
for *LATER* versions.  I suspect this is an oversight, but I cannot see how
you can dispute that it is the case.  They can easily correct it by
referring to "future publications" rather than "their publications in the
future", or adding a cast-iron statement that the version you have is free
for your use in perpetuity.

> But please be careful with you speech: The Opengroup people help a lot with
> making future Linux versions Standard compliant and do not charge for it.
> Please do not exacerbate those people....

(ITYM "enrage" or similar.)  Far be it from me to look a gift horse in the
mouth, but this one may have pointy teeth.  I'm far more inclined to believe
it is an unintentional slip, but it still results in terms I can't agree
with, and you have to agree that UK law would require an opt-out of emails
to be possible.

> Please start understanding how the world works.
>
> As I already stated: you will not get your bread for free!
>
> The work that has to be done in order to get free software has either be
> paid by companies or gets off the free time of polite people.
> The way you seem to behave is no help for the Free software coomunity :-(

I really enjoy getting these patronising outbursts from someone who is
apparently a research scientist developing free software.  It makes all the
time spent trying to help out seem so worthwhile.  It also really helps to
convince my company to keep releasing most of its development work as Free
Software and supporting resources.  (We are paid to research and develop
them and would welcome more paying clients, for what it's worth, if you're
in the market for net-based applications or network services.)

-- 
MJR ,----------------------------------------------------
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