ion windows manager on FreeBSD

[Carlos A. M. dos Santos]

2009/10/6 Renato Botelho <rbgarga at gmail.com>:
> On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 10:32 AM, Dmitry Marakasov <amdmi3 at amdmi3.ru> wrote:
>> * Mark Linimon (linimon at lonesome.com) wrote:
>>
>>> The author orginally contacted us with a legal threat because we were
>>> not in compliance with the 28-day clause.  A long, acrimonious disucssion
>>> ensued.  In that discussion, the author was asked "if we agree to meet
>>> that condition going forward, would you guarantee that this would remove
>>> any further legal threat?" and he said yes ...
>>>
>>> for now.
>>>
>>> But that he reserved the right to change his mind later.
>>>
>>> *depending* on what we did or did not do in the future -- not just in
>>> adhering to the *existing clauses* like the "significant" clause or
>>> "renamed" clause -- both of which he mentioned would be part of any
>>> lawsuit.
>>>
>>> Legally indefensible?  Of course.  Would that prevent a lawsuit being
>>> filed?  No.  Anyone can sue anyone for anything.
>>
>> Well, if you insist I of course won't commit it. But the whole thing
>> disappoints me greately, cause I was pretty sure at least FreeBSD
>> developers won't be affected by a mere FUD. Do you honestly think
>> the probability of Tuomo suing us is higher of, say, me suing, well,
>> us?  And that anything will change by us not providing a port we
>> have absolutely totally utterly 100% right to provide?  That is
>> just silly.
>>
>> The port from now on is available here (removed from people.freebsd.org):
>> http://mirror.amdmi3.ru/ports/ion3-20090110.port.tar
>
> You can start a fork of it, change its name, its license, and keep it as
> a separate project... people will use the same software with another
> name.

You can fork the code, rename it, whathever, but you can NOT change
the license without explicit permission from the original copyright
owner. That would be legally considered theft!

> Everybody will be happy and we won't have a Tuomo's software inside
> ports collection again.

It would be Tuomo's software anyway, regardless what you renamed it
to, and his ownership would still prevail. Feel free to dislike his
behavior but keep compliant to his rights unless you are whiling to
face a lawsuit.

-- 
My preferred quotation of Robert Louis Stevenson is "You cannot
make an omelette without breaking eggs". Not because I like the
omelettes, but because I like the sound of eggs being broken.