Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Request: Change the allowed license of plugins

["Ronnie Sahlberg" <ronnie_sahlberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: "Devin Heitmueller"
Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 3:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Request: Change the allowed license of plugins


> Perhaps it is time to consider voluntary surrender of copyright by
> individuals to an "Ethereal foundation" of some sort.  This would mean
> that as people contribute, the copyright is not held by the individual,
> but rather the group.

I am not going to surrender any copyright to anything I write.
What I write I write and I have copyright over. Period.

If you want a transfer of copyright from from me to you on stuff I write,
that may be arranged but
would then involve you tranfering a huge amoung of money to me first.

Basically, if you are not willing to pay me normal consulting fees for every
single
hour I spent developing, there wont be a transfer of copyright either.


>
> By doing this, we can make changes to the license (by majority vote),
> and not have to track down every individual who has made an addition to
> the product since it's inception.

Why would this be good?


After thinking it over I like the current licence and can currently not see
any real
benefits at all from changing it. I can only see drawbacks.


I cant see how the current licence is an ethereal problem.
I dont see any problems with the licence.

Some companies may have a problem with the licence since it does not allow
them do do whatever they
want with ethereal. That would then be that or those companies problem and
not ethereal's problem.
I could not care less about some random companies problem with the ethereal
licence, they just have
to deal with it and use other tools instead that have acceptable licences.


A much simpler solution that probably works well for everyone:
Companies that can not or wants not release decoders for ethereal have
several other, for them, much better options they might want to consider.
They can develop them as plugins for tools like Sniffer, GOSS etc and
distribute it to those tools instead.