SynthModules

Eeesh, this sounds pretty horrible.

Bryan

>>> mark@midiwall.com 2/27/2006 5:06:55 PM >>>
Bryan E Cornell (01:47 PM 2/27/2006) wrote:

>I probably haven't thought this through as much as others, but wouldn't some
>sort of license that stops somebody from trying to assert exclusive
>ownership of the code be a good thing?

(as a voice from the sidelines...)

When I first saw the GPL, that's exactly what it was. It's changed and 
shifted and become so bloody convoluted that it's stoopid.

It _USED_ to be a "formal" way of introducing things into the public domain 
- the REAL public domain, circa late 70's. I was there, I have a lot of 
code in the PD.

Then people started coming along, pulling PD source, stripping the 
comments, adding features, putting their "copyright" on it, and then 
"release it for download" (NOT the same as putting it back into the PD). 
For those folks here that are old enough, the most notable example of this 
was the code for XMODEM and MODEM7. (anyone remember the name Irf Hoff? 
a$$hole)

Anyway...

When that crap started happening, the people that were behind XMODEM/MODEM7 
were too bloody nice to make a huge stink about it.. But there was a group 
of folks that said "okay, this sucks, we gotta do something about it".

From how I was introduced to it, that "something" was the GPL.

The first GPL basically said the same thing that most of the PD headers did 
("dude, this is for everyone, add to it, fix it, make it better, but don't 
commercialize it") but now, there was a proclamation of a watchdog group 
behind the header and given that the community was small (this is pre 
Internet) it was easy to keep an eye on things.

The 'Net showed up, the GPL shifted and went right up to the edge of 
commercializing all this code - but stopped short of looking for $$$ for it.

The original concept of PD was to OPENLY AND FREELY share your ideas. You 
could take fragments of the source and use it in your apps (just add a 
"thanks joe!") and all would be well.

If you REALLY read the GPL now, there's not a lot that you can do with 
anything that's released under it. You can recompile the source, you can 
add to the project, but the GPL can "never" be removed, and ANYTHING you 
create with parts of GPL code instantly gets sucked into the GPL. _THAT_ is 
annoying.

For example, if I happen to find a random number generator that I like in a 
piece of GPL code, and I use that in my autonomous robotics driver, then 
ALL OF THE DRIVER SOURCE IS NOW GPL!

_WHAT_???

No, I don't think so.


Grant's right. NO ONE had the "right" to slap the GPL tag on that code. It 
goes against the nature of what Grant and Mike had intended.

Mark



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