[Bf-committers] Re: [Bf-blender-cvs] CVS commit: blender/release/scripts kmz_ImportWithMesh.py

[Ed Halley]

On Feb 14, 2007, at 6:18 PM, jmsoler at free.fr wrote:
 > These is an unneeded damages and, i repeat, nothing, in the GPL
 > licence, allows you to make these modifs.

Beg pardon?  The point of the GPL is to share the code and allow the
users of the code to *make* and *publish* their own derivative works.
It says so in the first two sentences of the Preamble, and at several
parts of the text in the rest of the full license.  Go read it again.
If you don't like the modifications made, you are still free (as the
100% copyright holder of your original version) to publish your own
version any way you like.  However, you cannot restrict someone who
obtained a GPL-licensed original version from modifying and
publishing their own derivative version of the work.  Again, that is
the point of the GPL.  It grants rights to the user (in this case the
folks who publish other files as a part of a collective project),
even if it reduces the powers of the original holder.  It's how
progress is made in open source projects.  It's how compatibility
with new versions is maintained over time.  The file will not remain
in a pristine 100%-original condition nor will all changes be
ratified through some arcane approval process that takes the egos of
contributors authors as the prime authority.

I don't just say this about Blender (I have no authority to speak
for blender decision-making) but about all projects that depend on
the GPL to allow for code sharing, code modifications, and code
publications.

You are being unreasonable about modifications to code you shared.
I don't care about personality conflicts, JMS, but seriously, if you
are going to have a conniption every time someone makes a change in
a file you submitted to the project, please for the sanity of all
involved and witnesses on the list, just unsubscribe from the list,
stop syncing the codebase, and grumble to yourself in
private about how the world has done you wrong.  It will save you
a lot of grief if you just chalk it all up to a learning experience
and stop trying to expect that the rest of the world will live by
your own strange interpretation of what the GPL means and says, and
stop trying to expect that everything you share should remain
unmolested long into the 22nd Century.  Freedom is more about
letting others do what they want to do, than expecting that you get
your way.

--
[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]