What's Canonical thinking about Bazaar?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn writes:

 > For example the copyright agreement could obligate Canonical to GPL  
 > all future versions of bzr?

The FSF standard assignment requires the FSF to release as free
software any code covered by the assignment *if* they distribute it.
It does *not* require them to release the whole Work as free software
That's covered by their covenants of incorporation, of course, and so
maybe some such provision for Canonical makes sense.  However, there
may be a legal minefield there (eg, problems with work for hire, whose
copyright often is vested in the contractor if the code is not used by
the client).

It's not clear to me that requiring GPL is a good idea, if even the
FSF doesn't do it.

 > > Canonical released Launchpad's source, completely and ahead of  
 > > schedule.  I feel that shows some kind of good faith.
 > 
 > Ah, actually the way I and most people that I've talked to perceive  
 > it is that Canonical kept Launchpad's source closed for a long time,  
 > which shows some kind of bad faith.

Zooko, I'm disgusted.  I thought better of you.

"Good faith" and "bad faith" are objectively measurable, according to
whether (1) promises are kept, and (2) whether certain information
relevant to a negotiation is honestly and fully revealed.

In this case, (2) is trivially satisfied: there was no negotiation,
merely a "nasty ultimatum" from Canonical: "we're going to open source
Launchpad by such and such a date, whether you like it or not."  As
for (1), it's reasonable for the world to interpret that "ultimatum"
as a promise.  Guess what?  Canonical kept it.

It's reasonable to argue that "anybody can go bankrupt, so let's make
sure that hypothetical successors to the IP of Canonical are bond by
the canons of open source, too".  But a good example of true "bad
faith" is spreading, and even merely failing to oppose, FUD like the
claim that Canonical acted in bad faith.  The "good faith" claim is
this:

 > I also believe that Canonical did that at least in part for
 > strategic reasons (to make sure there weren't mini-launchpads
 > trying to steal the thunder of launchpad.net)

You can say that in good faith (and not merely because you qualified
it as your opinion).

I strongly disagree with the implied value system that strategic
behavior is inherently bad, though.