Proposals for mono-basic and monodoc

[Rahul Sundaram]

Gerald Henriksen wrote:
> On Sun, 5 Nov 2006 11:18:18 -0500, you wrote:
> 
>> On Sunday 05 November 2006 01:08, Horst H. von Brand wrote:
>>> So it comes down to the exact licenses...
>> Which Novell, being the copyright owner, has the right to change at any time. 
> 
> And this differs from any other project included in Fedora how?

Not all projects have a single entity holding all the copyrights on it. 
For example, the Linux kernel is one major piece where there are 
multiple contributors. One person or entity cannot decide to relicense 
the code in the kernel. For code that is under the GPL without a single 
entity holding copyrights, everybody has to contribute effectively the 
same licensing terms which prevents the code from being restricted by 
patents. A single entity holding copyrights can workaround this.

   Any
> project community could either change the license or simply abandon
> any further development at any time.

Changing the license in a project with multiple different and 
distributed set of contributors is not so easy and in some cases 
impossible to do. Abandonment of a project is completely irrelevant to 
this argument. See my other mail for more details on the concerns.

> So what would you recommend people build their projects on?
>
> All the available options have negatives, some more serious than
> others, and all likely have Microsoft issues if Microsoft really
> wanted.

This is similar to the argument where people claim that all code 
insecure so you might as well as use Internet explorer or that all code 
might have patent issues, so you dont have to bother about it.

Rahul