Slashdot Mirror
On the Ethics of a Code Split?
McWizard asks: "We've recently had a code split at a project I'm leading. (No name given, as this is a question, not an advertisement campaign). While both projects have done some major design decisions in opposing directions, we've been keeping a close eye on the changelog of the spinoff for small changes that could be used. So, whenever we've found an interesting piece of code (mostly GUI stuff, nothing longer than 20 lines of code), we transferred it to our project and gave credit to the spinoff team in the changelog.
What does Slashdot say on that matter? Is this unethical or are such things fair game?"
"Yesterday, I was contacted by the leader of the spinoff project who told me that he's quiet angry at us for doing that and that it's considered unethical and rude to copy code from the spinoff.
As both projects are under the GPL, we have an opposing opinion on that matter and we've more than once invited him to copy code from our project. Nevertheless he's thinking about obfuscating his changelog and only open the source as packages when he's doing a release, which is, as he says, his right under the GPL."
That is the spirit of the GPL! You are allowed to copy and use GPL code if your code is also GPL!
He's a twit. How did he get his code base in the first place? By copying it, under GPL, from a community of people who wrote it and released it.
They didn't have veto power over others using their code and neither does he.
No, I believe the project is MegaMek, "an unofficial, online version of the classic BattleTech® board game." Unless McWizard at gmx dot com works on another GPL project.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
I use several OSS programs whose authors borrow code from each other frequently. A very fancy tab window controller was written for Adium (IM client), which was promptly implemented in Colloquy (IRC). As I understand it, the author of Fire (another IM client) is close to being able to have AV chat, and if that happens that code will get inserted into Adium ASAP. Of course, Adium is already using GAIM's libgaim as well.
It's like a giant orgy of shared code, and (to my knowledge) all of the authors are proud that their code is worth being implemented in other projects. Amazing how well we work together when money isn't involved...
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
McWizard in the red corner with Megameknet/Megamek:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/megameknet/
and in the blue corner urgru with mekwars:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mekwars/
Is this what its all about?
This is laid out in the open source definition, of which the GPL fits, which explicitly forbids obfuscated source.
Whether and how this applies to changelogs is another matter, since those could be interpreted as not being part of the source.
However, if the changelog is important for understanding the source, then I would interpret the GPL as regarding the changelog as part of the source code for the project, and therefore subject to the redistribution clause of the GPL.
There was a second paragraph in the original post... "Yesterday, I was contacted by the leader of the spinoff project who told me that he's quiet angry at us for doing that and that it's considered unethical and rude to copy code from the spinoff. As both projects are under the GPL, we have an opposing opinion on that matter and we've more than once invited him to copy code from our project. Nevertheless he's thinking about obfuscating his changelog and only open the source as packages when he's doing a release, which is, as he says, his right under the GPL." So, yeah, I'd say there was a gripe.
It's MegamekNET, not MegaMek, and the fork is MekWars. (all three are on sourceforge.net)