Re: [Savannah-hackers] submission of Brutus - Collaboration Framework - savannah.nongnu.org

[Sylvain Beucler]

Hi,

I'm evaluating the project you submitted for approval in Savannah.


As far as I understand, you are developing a free replacement for MS
Exchange, the Brutus server, as well as providing facility for people
who want to implement Brutus client. If you depend on Exchange for the
very first version, this is acceptable for hosting at Savannah.

However, we only host projects that can run on a free operating system
(such as Debian GNU/Linux). It seems you are developing this piece of
software for Windows only.

We have adopted this policy because now that completely free operating
systems exist, we do not want to encourage users of those systems to
start using proprietary operating systems so that they can use your
program.

If you are willing to maintain a version for free operating systems,
which work as well as or better than other ports, you can then provide
versions for nonfree systems as well.  The idea is that at no point
should only-free users be at a disadvantage compared to users of
proprietary software.

Your project should always work equally well in free systems as in any
other version you provide; if you have some modules for nonfree
systems, you can delay their release until you have released the free
operating system version.

Please provide us more details on this point.


Also, note that commercial does not mean proprietary. 

Free Software means that users have certain freedoms; it does not mean
zero price.  "Commercial" means "associated with business"; a
commercial program may be free or non-free, depending on its license.
So it is a mistake to treat "free" and "commercial" as contraries.
When a business develops free software, that is free commercial
software.


Last, licensing under the "GNU GPL v2 only" is problematic.  Would you
please agree to license under the "GNU GPL v2 or later"?

The reason for this is that when we publish GPL v3, it will be
important for all GPL-covered programs to advance to GPL v3.  If you
don't put this in the files now, the only way to port your program to
GPL v3 would be to ask each and every copyright holder, and that may
be very difficult.

We can explain the issue in more detail if you wish.  If you have
concerns about "GNU GPL v2 or later", We'd be happy to address them
too.


If you are willing to make the changes mentioned above, please provide
us with an URL to an updated tarball of your project.  Upon review, we
will reconsider your project for inclusion in Savannah.

Regards,

-- 
Sylvain


On Thu, Sep 02, 2004 at 04:41:28AM -0400, address@hidden wrote:
> A package was submitted to savannah.nongnu.org
> This mail was sent to address@hidden, address@hidden
> 
> 
> Jules Colding <address@hidden> described the package as follows:
> License: gpl
> Other License: 
> Package: Brutus - Collaboration Framework
> System name: brutus
> Type: non-GNU
> 
> Description:
> Brutus is a development framework that makes it possible for Free Software to 
> access a Microsoft Exchange server. 
> 
> I know that I hereby by necessity are depending on a very non-free program 
> for the first version of Brutus, but I feel that it is important for free 
> software to be able to access Exchange on an equal footing with MS Outlook. A 
> free replacement for Outlook is thereby possible and will enable 
> organizations to deploy desktops which are solely build upon free software. 
> 
> Another important point is that a native Brutus server, replacing Exchange, 
> is a logical and inevitable consequence of widespread client acceptance of 
> the Brutus API (thereby the historical reference for the name "Brutus"). 
> 
> Brutus is a complete wrapping of all of MAPI into a (large) set of CORBA 
> interfaces. Source is available at 
> <http://www.omesc.com/content/downloads/index.php> and there is more 
> technical information on the site.
> 
> 
> Other Software Required:
> TAO and ACE for the server. No dependencies for the client except for some 
> CORBA implementation e.g. ORBit2.
> 
> Other Comments:
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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>   http://savannah.nongnu.org/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> address@hidden
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-- 
Sylvain