kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@...>]

Richard A Burton wrote:
> 2008/8/27 Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@...>:
>> You might want to take a look at the license for DialogBlocks
>> <http://www.anthemion.co.uk/dialogblocks/faq.htm#license> that is used
>> to layout most of the dialog boxes in Kicad. It is neither open source
>> or free as in beer. I did a quick grep of some of the dialog sources
>> managed by DialogBlocks and they were all created with an unregistered
>> (demo) version of DialogBlocks. So even if there is an agreement
>> (verbal or written) between the Kicad project and the developer of
>> DialogBlocks, it can change at any time and require nearly all of the
>> dialog boxes to be rewritten.
> 
> It doesn't mean anything like that. In fact it specifically states:
> "Are there licensing restrictions on the generated code?
> No. You can treat the resulting code as if you had written it
> yourself from scratch."
> 
> Yes the license could be changed, but that would only be applicable to
> code generated with a version of the tool distributed under that new
> license. It would not be applicable to existing code that has already
> been generated under this license, so there would be no need to
> recreate any dialog boxes. Spreading FUD about non-free applications
> is no better than spreading it about FOSS, so please try to avoid it.
> 

No FUD intended. DialogBlocks is an excellent program. I am just
trying point out that this kind of thing can and has happened in the
past. Yes, according to the current license the existing code could
continued to be used but it would effectively mean there may be no
upgrade path for future wxWidgets enhancements should this scenario
happen. Personally, I don't think it will happen. What bothers me is
that the project is indirectly dependent on proprietary software that by
all rights (IMO) should be purchased. That is why I stopped working on
the dialogs. I am not comfortable using the demo version of
DialogBlocks. I am personally not going to purchase a copy (not because
it is proprietary and costs money but because I am not a big fan of IDEs
and dialog layout tools in general) nor should other developers in the
project be expected to purchase a copy in order to contribute to Kicad.
My other issue is concerning someone wanting to use a different piece
of proprietary software and getting a bit of grief over it when the
project already uses proprietary software for development.

> On the VC++ topic I don't understand why this has caused so much
> debate. If someone wants to add support for another compiler that's
> great, so long as they don't break any existing builds. It gives a
> wider development platform, which is a good thing. Remember open
> source is about choice, and you are perfectly free to choose to use a
> closed source free/paid compiler if you want to, for whatever reasons
> you want (and there are plenty of good and bad reasons/scenarios to do
> this).
> 

Agreed. Spirited debate can and should be part of any open source
project. Hopefully no one is put off by some of the discussions that
happen on this mailing list and continue to contribute to the Kicad project.

Wayne

> Richard.
> 
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