Re: Distribution of CERN WWW software

Tony Sanders (sanders@bsdi.com)
Wed, 16 Nov 1994 13:21:48 -0600


Jean-Philippe Martin-Flatin writes:
> Sounds to me CERN want to prevent other people from making money out of CERN's
> work, which is a very reasonable thing to do IMHO.
I suspect that we are talking about W3O and not CERN.

My guess is that they plan on making money off of memberships to the
consortium (a good thing and I hope my company will join) and somehow
believe that will be more possible if they own the copyrights to libwww.
Let's just say that I'm skeptical that this is the best solution. The
code has been in the public domain in the past and the WWW project has
grown at a phenomenal rate. I see no reason that changing this will be
better for the WWW project as a whole, tell me why I'm wrong.

They have much more to offer than the copyright on libwww (which isn't at
all a key piece of technology itself). They have some incredible talent
at their disposal (TimBL just to start) and I believe that W3O will be
critical to the development of WWW in the future.

I want to see the new copyright and then I'll decide what I want to do.
I hope I'm wrong but I did want to make my objection public so that this
issue could be discussed.

Showing great personal restraint I will not address your other, errr,
ummm, "arguments"; which have nothing to do with the point at hand or WWW.