Then stop making people believe that is is a *legal requirement*. Is it GPL or not?
It
is a legal requirement. The GNU GPL doesn't say otherwise. The GPL doesn't say that you can do anything you please with a software that is released under GNU GPL. It allows to make a tag like the "Powered by Coppermine" mandatory. We discussed this with OSI and FSF members already. Unless you're an expert or copyright lawyer I suggest not to interpret the GPL as
you see fit.
I am very respectfull and gratefull to the Coppermine Dev' Team and especially to the initator of the project Gregory Demar and its successor Joachim Mueller.
Then I suggest showing your respect by respecting the wish of Gregory Démar to leave the footer intact. Not too much to ask imo, leaving all legal discussion aside.
[ironic]Very sad that you brought this subject in such a subject....does this follow the posting best practices?[/ironic]
Yes, in the thread "
Share your galleries", such a discussion doesn't belong. There are many threads already (like the one Hein has refered to) that discuss the license issue. However, it's justified to remind you of the Coppermine tag being a requirement both in legal as well in ethical terms. Hein asked you nicely to respect this. It was you who started an argument. I really would like to split this discussion though from the "Share your galleries" thread, however I don't want people who dispute the need to keep the tag to believe that we shy away from the discussion - that's why I won't move this discussion from this thread.
Every now and then there are people who keep on discussing this issue, and all those debates that usually start in a friendly manner soon end up in a flame war. There is even a third party site (who's webmaster actually resells Coppermine with his own footer replacing the original one and constantly flaming the coppermine dev team on his site). I'm really fed up having to repeat this discussion over and over. Why don't you leave all legal aspects aside and read between the lines, as all free software licences are meant to be understood: there are people who spend a lot of time and effort to create an application - in the first place for their own use. Then they decide to share their work with others and release the software under a free software license (be it GPL or one of the other flavors approved by the OSI), not making their minds up too much over such lame things as copyright details. The bottom line is: they did the works, so they deserve the right to decide what happens with their software. In a next stage, some people come along, download their free copy and spend a very small amount of time (compared to the huge amount of time the original developers and the community around the application have spent to build the app in the first place) to customize the free app and then decide that they deserve the right to change the software in a way that was never intended by the original developers. They tend to hide behind formal and legal arguments, but actually they just behave selfish imo. This is just lame: we're coders, not lawyers. We like sharing our work with others. We do not like having to justify and explain our intentions. In an ideal world, people like you who do something with the app that was not intended would at least undo their "unwanted" changes after having been told so in a calml and friendly manner.
I ask you to stop this argument now and instead restore the credits as they were meant to be kept. If you decide not to do so, then I ask you to stop this argument anyway. If you still decide to continue this discussion, I will split the entire discussion from this thread and move it into a new thread, not for the sake of muting someone who disagrees with our point of view, but simply for keeping this thread in a way that it was designed for.
Joachim Müller
- coppermine project manager -