18 Mar
2003
18 Mar
'03
10:50 a.m.
Hallo,
Dave Phillips hat gesagt: // Dave Phillips wrote:
Frank, as you can see, this license prohibits *any*
redistribution
unless specifically contracted via MIT.
I didn't understand it this way, but it seems to be even worse than I
thought...
However, Rick Boulanger recently met with Barry Vercoe
to ask
specifically about a change in the license. Apparently Barry is
sympathetic but he may not have the real power to change it, i.e., it
might be more MIT's decision than his (as you can see above, Barry does
not hold the copyright, it belongs to MIT). At any rate, Rick spoke with
Barry a few weeks ago and nothing of substance has been reported yet.
Rick is a good fellow, I know he wants to help resolve this rather
important issue, but don't hold your breath waiting for a change.
Yes, this license discussion is so old but it is also so sad. MIT
could make available a good software, but they need to face the fact,
that it is several *decades* old. I see no way they could make any
money from such an "old-fashioned" software, and also Csound is *only*
still useful today because of the work, non-MIT people like j. ffitch
are doing for it.
So MIT isn't just holding back a piece of software they own, but a
whole community, that they don't own, but they behave like the did.
There lies the real tragic of the whole affair and that is the point,
why every 6 months or so an important developer is leaving the Csound
community.
I really hope, Dr. Boulanger can persuade the MIT to make Csound open
source. I learned a lot from the Csound book, but I'm forced to use
this knowledge in Pd now. (Which I would have done anyway, I guess ;)
ciao
--
Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org__