On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 2:16 PM, Fons Adriaensen <fons@linuxaudio.org> wrote:

Hello all,

It has come to my attention that there are ATM at least two
'forks' of Aeolus. The first by the MuseScore team, the second
by one Maurizio Gavioli.

Neither of them even had the decency to let me know of their
work, and both are taking Aeolus in a direction I do not
approve of. Gavioli has even added his 'copyright' to the
sources of the libraries that Aeolus depends on but which
are not part of its source distribution. Apparently the
intention is to release incompatible versions of those as
well.

If this is typical for the attitude taken by the Linux Audio
community then my motivation to contribute to it will take
a serious blow.

As announced previously, there will be a fully reworked
release of Aeolus next year (on the occasion of its 10th
birthday). Apart from major improvements to the audio code
it will be completely OSC controlled. None of this will be
compatible with the forks of course, they'll find themselves
instantly obsolete. And I will make sure that this sort of
thing won't happen again, even if that means a more restrictive
license.

Ciao,

Respectfully, you granted people the right to fork your code in the first place. Now you say you might take this right away, but why? How has it harmed you or anyone else? Why should you have been notified that a fork took place? The whole point of free software is that people can adapt it to their needs and share their changes with those with similar needs. If those forks are better suited to the task at hand than your original code, then people may well use them (and that's a good thing!). If your new release is better, people may well use that. Isn't that the point? To help people? Plus, if the forks did/do make any improvements that you value, hey, that's great merge them, not that I think you'd ever do that ;-)

We can't all be all things to everybody all the time. The value of your projects isn't necessarily in the complete package with your name on it. If someone takes your engine and slaps a new interface on it that people like better, well, they still use your engine, right? It's hard to put your ego aside sometimes, but I really recommend that you do. You've contributed a lot to Linux Audio and I'd hate to see that ruined by bruised egos and non-free licenses.