Re: Status of project?

[David Christie]

> On Friday, September 01, 2006 7:45 PM, "boud" <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> There's also http://www.samizdat.net/ which has been running as a
> French-language alternative press for many years. It has no relation
> to the samizdat software package.

I've noticed them, but I don't read French, so I'm not familiar with their 
content. Do you know if they are an ISP or what? There seem to be quite a 
few email addresses in that domain, because at samizdat.org I get occasional 
accidentally mis-directed email to random people.

www.samizdat.com is a small husband-and-wife consultancy (east coast USA). 
None of these domains are in any way related to www.samizdat.org.  In fact I 
do not have a www.samizdat.org web site up yet, though I have owned that 
domain since sometime in the 1990's and have long been planning to use it in 
connection with an eventual open source release. It's just coincidence that 
www.nongnu.org/samizdat and www.samizdat.org both are RDF-related projects. 
I'm still not sure what I should do about the name collision.

> BTW: this nongnu project is not just open source - it's free software, 
> protected under the GPL.

Yes, I know. I noticed its license is "GPL 2.0 or any later version."

Have you followed the development of GPL 3.0 (due to be finalized soon - see 
http://gplv3.fsf.org/)? I am considering GPL 3.0 for my upcoming software 
release, with an "Affero-GPL-like" clause which extends source code access 
(copyleft) to network users. That sort of clause, permitted under GPL 3.0 
but not 2.0, would close what I call the "google loophole", in which it is 
legal to use GPL'ed software to run a giant commercial web site, even after 
mixing the code with your own proprietary code, without having to release 
_any_ of the derived work's source code to users of the site (because you 
are not "distributing" the code, just "using" it). The "Affero" clause 
requires you to distribute your complete source code by HTTP download to any 
network user who wants it -- all of it of course, including your 
modifications and additions.

GPL 3.0 has other improvements, as well, which help further protect open 
source code against nefarious means of "taking it private". I think it's a 
substantial improvement, helping to preserve the rights of both users and 
developers.

Cheers

-dc