From: Dave Thomas <Dave@...>
Date: 2002-07-03T23:05:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Juergen Katins and the German translation

"Dirk Detering" <detering@iskv.de> writes:

> > In my personal opinion: Restore the OPL, apologize to Dave, and
> > let us all forget any negatives.
> 
> I support that and would be glad if this would be possible.

FWIW, I'm personally not looking for an apology.

I have two concerns in this whole sorry mess. Firstly, we're still the
only printed Ruby book released under an open license. If the
community would like to see others, then publishers will need to feel
secure that the licenses they choose to use actually mean
something. Protecting the license is important for the Ruby community.

Second, Juergen Katins does not have a monopoly in supporting the
open source community. I've been using open source since the 80's, and
with Ruby I've finally had the opportunity to give something back.

The foundation of open source is the licensing it uses, and that
licensing is enforced through copyright. If the licensing and
copyright mean nothing, then the entire open source community is
threatened. (Imagine the phone conversation with Richard Stallman
should you take one of his GPLed works, translate it to German, and
change its license into something proprietary).

So, I also feel that protecting the license is important for the
entire open source community.


Having said all that, this entire episode has made me very sad, and
that's not something I want to associate with Ruby. So as far as I'm
concerned it's not something I'm going to discuss any more. 

Thank you Herr Katins for the effort you put in to the translation,
Thanks to everyone in the community who has voiced their support for
the principles of open source licensing.

Now let's back to our regularly scheduled programming (in Ruby).


Dave