Subject: Re: ability to not to use gnome print under gnome build
From: Vlad Harchev (hvv@hippo.ru)
Date: Thu Nov 30 2000 - 04:32:55 CST
On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, Sam TH wrote:
Hi,
Just looked at gnome-print license - it's really LGPL now! Thanks, Sam for
heads up. Last time I looked it was GPLed (and file COPYING.LIB was commited
to (or changed in) gnome CVS only 7 Aug. So it really was GPLed. My attitude
to gnome project is much improved. The only grain of salt is GPLness of
guppy3. Thanks again.
But this doesn't mean I will have time to hack gnome print in the near future
:)
> On Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 12:24:02PM +0400, Vlad Harchev wrote:
> > On Wed, 29 Nov 2000, Dom Lachowicz wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Sorry if I sound like an asshole but...
> > >
> > > I don't like this suggestion and I personally won't commit it. Unless
> > > convinced otherwise, I will revert any changes that achieve this affect.
> > > Why? Well, among other things:
> > >
> > > 1) The print dialog code will be horribly ugly
> >
> > Why we can't use our "plain unix" dialog for that?
> Because using gnome-print is The Right Thing To Do (tm). Using the GTK
> dialog is just a stopgap measure. Working to improve gnome-print is
> really the best solution.
May be I was understood wrong. I proposed to add another menu item to File
menu, called "print directly", that will pop the gtk dialog up. I didn't
propse to hack gnome-print dialog to also allow printing via plain unix code,
and I didn't propose to remove gnome-print dialog too. I was suggesting to add
another menu item (may be even hidden for latin1 locales) to popup gtk dialog.
User should have a choice IMO. May be some bug will popup in gnome-print
that will prevent the use of gnome build for some users. Just writing 20-line
patch to fix this potential problem might be reasonable idea.
> Personally, I might use a stopgap measure here. But I'm not the GNOME
> FE maintainer, Dom is, so you should convince him.
>
> >
> > > 2) It doesn't solve the problem that lies in the gnome-print code.
> >
> > Agreed. But there is a big chance that they can't be solved in the near
> > future without redesigning it (say support for CJK languages).
> >
>
> I know that GNOME is working to build everything on top of the new
> pango library, which will have extensive support for all sorts of
> character sets.
GTK-2.0 will use Pango. Gnome print doesn't mention it in any file (source or
header).
> > > 3) Our code gets convoluted, ugly, hard to follow, and buggy.
> >
> > I don't agree with "buggy".
> > And I have an impression that plain gtk print dialog and all functionality
> > could be enabled in gnome print using patch no longer than 20 lines.
> > And I don't see any pain it could bring. We can make AW not to show that menu
> > item under latin1 locales.
> >
> > > Either we use gnome-print or we don't. I won't allow any of this mixing
> > > and matching. It's bad on the developers and bad for the end users. I do
> > > feel your pain though and would like for everything to "just work" with
> > > the gnome-print code. The correct solution is to get gnome-print to
> > > properly support non-latin1 fonts.
> >
> > I have a personal policy of not improving crucial GPLed libraries (not
> > LGPLed) for free (or without becoming a coauthor) - since people write GPLed
> > libraries mostly to make a lot of money by licensing them to commercial
> > software vendors.
>
> 1) gnome-print doesn't require copyright assignment, so if you
> contributed to it, no one could license it under any other license
> without your approval. So you don't have to worry.
That's very nice. The problem is - if I just fix a pile of bugs, I can't hold
copyright for bugfixes/fixed code. I have to write any module myself to claim
copyright on it. That's a bad thing about bugfixing.
> 2) There is ZERO possibility of GNOME doing anything like this. The
> GNOME libraries that are GPL are that way so that proprietary code
> can't use them, not to make money. If someone tried this, all of
> GNOME would revolt.
First, all members of gnome foundation can link to GPLed gnome libraries. The
membership costs $10K/year currently. Granted, it's rather cheap currently..
Second, one rather crucial gnome library is GPLed only in order to raise
money. The library's author told me that privately. That's very disappointing,
so I'm very careful about improving GPLed libraries now.
> 3) gnome-print *is* LGPL.
Yes, it really is now. Thanks for reminding. It was GPLed last time I've
checked it.
Best regards,
-Vlad
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