On 06/29/2010 06:04 AM, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jun 2010, João Pais wrote:
Since it's a rather complex patch I would prefer for people not to edit it too much
Curious. I make complex patches and I prefer that people would edit them.
What's surprising? That different people have different wishes about how their own work gets used?
In any case, I don't think that you are stating the real reason. There's a missing (implied) part in your sentence.
I guess "complex" implies that he spent/invested a lot of work on it, and this in turn implies he is sort of "jealous" (which I _don't_ say in a negative sense in any way) of his work, and would like to maintain a certain "control" or "paternity" over it or at least "avoid" (see below) that someone else does. While this may be contrary to the generous sharing spirit of the open source community I think it's more than legitimate.
(and if I get any grants to continue to work on it, it might get even more complex),
Complexity of a patch is not a goal in itself.
Joao didn't say it is a goal in itself, he just prospected a likely future. While it is not necessary, project often (or even usually) do grow in complexity as further work is done on them.
although most of the people using it won't be able even to open the gop.
Why won't they ? and then, why bet that it will work ?
I think he said he doesn't want to bet it will work,
Another aspect is to prevent anyone to grab the code and do a commercial version of it.
Licenses do not prevent people from doing things, they just give you a basis for legal action. This is a deterrent,
Well it is almost impossible to prevent anybody from doing anything; a deterrent is the best you can (reasonably) get in such a context.
Cheers m.