New subject: [X2go-dev] X2go-dev Digest, Vol 21, Issue 18

22 Sep 2010

      Joerg
I agree with John in his view of Hienz and Alex.   They are good folks BUT
everyone has to remember they are ONLY 2 people !
They have a separate life where they have to earn money to support
themselves & families too.
x2go is something they have dedicated themselves to because it aids them in
their other income related activities.
There's an old saying:
                                Nothings impossible for those that don't
do the work.
Given that Heinz and Alex have been working for the past year to create this
new release of x2go ... again while working on their
day jobs ... oh, and while building the new x2go wiki etc.
Now that they are in what is hoped to be the final stages and frankly I'd
rather they focus on that and worry about where to post the
source code when they have some breathing space.
Give them a break is my vote.
Brian Mullan

...
Message: 3
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 14:51:42 -0400
From: "John A. Sullivan III" <jsullivan@opensourcedevel.com>
To: x2go-dev@lists.berlios.de
Subject: Re: [X2go-dev] GPL violations
Message-ID: <1285181502.3417.19.camel@localhost>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
...
Hey list,
I just got an email back from Heinz - a private mail!
You know that I have been discussing about the plugin and sources with
him and Alex on this list for a couple of months now.
Other people have asked as well where the sources for the plugin are.
Obviously they think that I cannot read C++ code and sent me the link to
...
in the hope that I believe them. But unfortunately I had a look into the
code (trying to build it) and saw that it executes a binary: an extended
version of x2goclient with heaps of new command line options.   Asking
for the source (which is your and my right according to GPL) I
got one of these famous excuses saying "oh, we are in the process of
changing to QTBrowserPlugin" and so on.
In short: 99% of x2goplugin's sources are not published - this affects
(modified and not modified) third-party components as well.
Everybody who publically distrubtes GPL software in binary form and does
NOT provide a link to the sources violates the license. The GPL doesn't
say "if you have time and the weather is nice you can publish the sources
if you want to".
Therefore I would not recommend anybody to use the plugin in a production
environment and integrate it into any project! It will be you
who will get into court if one of your customers enforces his GPL rights
and you have distributed it in your project.
Just to let you know: I feel a bit fooled with all the excuses and that
...
stuff that's only a 7.5K file wrapping around the actual component.
In my opinion, the way they deal with community input/ideas/contributions
is ignorance. Nothing of the critics and
proposals was taken seriously. We still don't have a GIT repo - and that
would take them 5 minutes or less!
But that's alright - we don't have to have git. But we HAVE to follow
legal requirements in the GPL. And not next year, but NOW!
I spent a lot of time and energy into this and the result: I am
...
contirubte! And the worst result: I am frustrated as hell, that I spend
months waiting and writing dozens of mails to enforce my rights that I
have by law.
After all, I'd just like to inform all of you, that I am going to report
On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 19:47 +0200, J?rg Sawatzki wrote:
the plugin.cpp source (http://x2go.obviously-nice.de/mozplugin/) again -
they try to somehow get around legal requirements by sending me some
maintaining my own python code externally now, because they don't let me
this to gpl-violations.org as after explaining it again and again I still
see no change.
I'll inform NoMachine as well and advise them to enforce their legal
rights as well - it is their code as well!
...
I am sorry for bothering you with this, but I think it is important to
draw things like this into plubic attention
...
<snip>
...
Hello, Joerg.  I've listened to you very patiently on this list for a while
now because you do contribute and help and you are correct about
the GPL. I, too, am frustrated about the lack of access to all the source
and the difficulty in finding the source that is available
(although less so than you because I have not had the time that I wish I
had to look into the sources and contribute more).
However, I believe you are seriously misreading Heinz (with whom I have now
worked for a couple of years) and Oleksandr.  Yes, they should (make
that "must") publish the code but I also realize they are two honest and
sincere fellows with full time jobs outside of X2Go who have given us an
enormous project with no significant financial backing of which I'm aware.
Sometimes there are just not enough hours in the day (week,
month) to get it all done.  Perhaps we may disagree with their priorities
but let's not think there is some malicious, hidden agenda.
Receiving such emails probably does more to make them wonder why they ever
launched this project than it does to help the situation.
I am painfully familiar with being a completely overwhelmed open source
maintainer.  Sometimes there is not even enough time to enable
volunteers who are willing to help (set up git, wiki, code, etc.) to help.
It can just feel completely overwhelming.  So let's please
contribute, guide, even positively correct but let's not jump up and down
on the dev's heads. That doesn't help at all.  I'm am sincerely
grateful for what Heinz and Oleksandr have done despite my concerns
which are very close to yours.  Peace - John
PS - regarding the plugin specifically, I believe they have made it clear
that the plugin is NOT released.  They have kindly responded to
requests for access to the plugin by list members by making it available.
Perhaps now they wish they had not been so kind and kept it
under wraps until it was ready for release including source.

Re: [X2go-dev] X2go-dev Digest, Vol 21, Issue 18