Re: [Gnumed-devel] Gui-Designers was the id_name debate

[Horst Herb]

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 18:18, J Busser wrote:
> 1. It is touted as Open Source GPL-licensed however it was developed
> under the auspices of McMaster University. AFAIK, until the
> University formally divests itself, it will continue to retain
> intellectual property rights and could revoke the licence. Yet this
> is nowhere made clear.

Once GPL, always GPL. Cannot be revoked. If they are the copyright holders, 
they can release a new branch under non-GPL / non-free licenses (only the 
copyright holder can do that), but if you already have any version licensed 
under GPL, this is a legally binding license entitling to do with it whatever 
the GPL allows. Now and in all future.

Apart from that, David Chan is very committed to the free software paradigm - 
they just started the project without much ties to the rest of the free 
software world, and went through the learning process WHILE producing 
something useful. But I know they have caught up and certainly know the ropes 
now.

Also, OSCAR has substantially improved - both design and implementation wise. 
It actually allows PostgreSQL backends now, works with Mozilla as a browser, 
etc.

Horst