Note that he ALSO said that not acknowledging your sources is the sort
of thing that only angle-shooting scum will do.

Ethics is the art of knowing the difference between what you *can* do
and what you *should* do.

Perhaps he feels that there are higher authorities than the GPL.

RMS was (and is) a clever hacker - but there are other guideposts to
civilized behavior.

--
Kenneth Sloan                             KennethRSl...@gmail.com
Computer and Information Sciences                 +1-205-932-2213
University of Alabama at Birmingham           FAX +1-205-934-5473
Birmingham, AL 35294-1170           http://www.cis.uab.edu/sloan/

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit

Point well taken.  And one of the reasons why so many folks
disagree with the GPL position on attribution.

I think that part of the problem is the fact that so many people
who totally disagree with the no-owner free-software underpinnings
of the GPL release software under GPL, and then flame those who do
agree with Stallman's philosophy and behave accordingly.  If you
really do believe that you own something, someone who acts as if
you don't tends to anger you, even if you did agree to a license
that says that you don't own it.  Even if the work is released to
the public domain, it's still annoying seeing someone come along
and claim that they wrote it when they clearly didn't.

Which reminds me; have you read my new work _ Philosophiæ Naturalis
Principia Mathematica: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy_?  
It consists of three books: _De Motu Corporum: On the motion of bodies_
Volumes I and II, and _De Mundi Systemate: On the system of the world_.
In it I explain how I invented calculus.  Some little-known religious
fanatic going by the name Isaac Newton stole all of my best ideas... :)

(Note to the humor impaired: think first, flame later; not everything
posted to Usenet is serious.)

--
Guy Macon
<http://www.guymacon.com/>

Which is how I feel. Couple that with a web page written about me,
calling me a liar etc:

http://prolinux.free.fr/scid/FAQ.html#fork_insane

and it does rather irritate me.

I've no idea how many people believe my version of events, and how many
believe Pascals - it would be nice to know.

BTW, it is possible under some circumstances to take over inactive
projects on Sourceforge.

http://sourceforge.net/docs/D01/en/#takeover

I don't know where that fits in with your earlier statement that it is
illegal for Pascal to use the name Scid. The problem with the term
'illegal' is that it depends on which country you are in.

As you can see, Pascal Georges ( pgeor...@users.sourceforge.net or
pascal.georg...@free.fr ) is not the nicest person to deal with and is
certainly the nastiest open-source developer I have ever come across.

I had not actually noted his trick with the email address, in leaving
mine in a form ready for spam bots, but disguising his own. But I guess
given his acts of plagiarism in claiming he wrote code for 'Scid' that
he did not write, I should not be too surprised.

I suspect he might wish he had not committed the acts of plagiarism, but
it is too late for that.

Dr. David Kirkby

Dave a écrit :

Ok, I know this is false, and you know this is false. I know what I did,
I know that you can make mistakes in code and mess things and never
acknowledge it or apologize when someone proves to you that you are the
one to blame (you accused the code *I* sent to you of corrupting
databases, then you stated "I can't reproduce it" and you never
apologized because simply you did not know how to use Scid : remember ?
And I took code from *you* ??).

Then, to keep your mouth closed, I stated you are the author of Scid
3.6.18 : sorry I can't do more to please you and your ego.

When someone keeps shouting "the sky is green", you end up by saying
"yes, the sky is green". But this only means that he is daltonian, and I
really don't care he is a daltonian.

Pascal

Guy Macon a écrit :

Guy, you may be right about Scid as trademark and I may be wrong. But
putting the debate on a law-ish side is a bit over exaggerated and
useless for me. I kept clear intentions on my work, in a transparent
manner, only trying to add work to Scid that can facilitate the come
back of Scid's author. If he comes back, now he can immediatly take part
of my work, and release a "genuine" Scid 3.7 in one week (that is why I
only use version numbering like 3.6.x). Nice isn't it ?

I prefer to stay on a more friendly and smooth discussion between adults
(impossible with DK), and if one day there is the risk of any conflict
with Scid's author's will, I'll do all what is necessary to avoid it.

So far the only conflict is with someone who substituted all Scid's
tokens in source code to put his own name : nothing to do with Scid's
development.
If I had wrote a great software, and was ill for years and if someone
took my work, change it in a way it is very hard for me to reintegrate
it in my original project : do you think I would be happy, even if he
had the right to do it ?

Pascal

Guy Macon a écrit :

Don't you think that the only person that can judge if nice or not is
only Scid's author ? Here are some quotes from the *only* mail I got
from S. Hudson :
"[...]I am happy for others to help wherever possible.[...]"
"[...]I'm happy for you to be added as an admin at sourceforge, if that
makes it easier to get a new release sorted out.[...]"
"[...]it seems like you have added some great new features.[...]"

Yes, you are right : he does not clearly allow me to keep on with Scid,
he simply encouraged me to do so. This is what I understood. If I got
the tiniest feeling of the opposite, I would have immediately stopped.

When you state :

The rudeness of your words are really inappropriate here, and now this
spreads some doubt of the value of your arguments for me (my personal
feeling).

Pascal

On Aug 19, 3:42 am, Pascal <pas...@nospam.fr> wrote:

I think Guy has made a pretty convincing presentation of the GPL
requirements in this context.  Perhaps it lacked a diplomatic
touch.  :)  I have one doubt about all of this.  Pascal, is English a
second language for you?  I ask because this whole affair might have
some roots in confusion based on language issues.  Certainly
discussing the nuances of the GPL in English with someone who could
handle it much better in say French would not be optimal for
understanding.  :)  In any case, I thank both authors for their
efforts at writing GPL code, and hope that this conflict will fade
away soon.

J.D. Walker

Guy Macon  <http://www.guymacon.com/> wrote:

No, trademarks have to be claimed.

On the other hand, the trademark owner has to defend his trademark
once he became aware of violations.  If a trademark is not defended,
the courts will take the attitude that it is not valuable to the
trademark owner.  Since the trademark is not valuable to its owner,
there can be no harm in somebody else using the name.

In particular, if I owned a trademark and you mailed me mentioning
that you were going to use my trademarked name, I would have to
respond by either allowing you to do so or forbidding you.  Not
reacting to such a mail would be seen as failure to defend the
trademark if I later decided to sue you over it.  So my guess is that,
in fact, Shane would lose if he tried to sue over trademark violation
here, assuming he had a trademark in the first place (which I believe
he does not.)

Dave.

--
David Richerby                                Mentholated Newspaper (TM): it's
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/           like a daily broadsheet but it's
                                              invigorating!

David Richerby a écrit :
It depends on the country.

I know for sure that they have to be registered in Germany, France, and
Benelux (there are very few exceptions, and only for very famous
trademark that do not need registering to be protected).
I also know for sure that in the US, they have to be used (in fact they
have to be used before registering, if you ever need a formal registration).

For international registration, the Madrid agreement states that people
can register their trademark at the WIPO (World Intellectual Property
Organisation) if they have already registered in one country which has
signed the Madrid agreement. However, people have to pay for each
country they want a valid registration, turning an international
registration into a very costly process.

In many countries, trademarks are not protected any more if they haven't
been used for a "period of time" (5 years usually), and, as David wrote
in his previous message, they have to be defended, or protection of the
trademark is also lost.