future of HgKit

[Matt Mackall]

On Fri, 2009-10-02 at 22:06 +0200, Mirko Friedenhagen wrote:
> Am 29.09.2009 um 22:41 schrieb Andrey Somov:
> > Hello Mirko,
> > (following the discussion in the Mercurial mailing list) may I ask  
> > you how
> > do you see the future of HgKit ?
> > Since it is released under GPL it cannot be used in any major IDE.
> 
> Well, that's a pity and right now I am not very convinced that having  
> double licensing with the EPL is even allowed. So the future is  
> probably doomed as I do not see how I can develop easily without  
> looking at the python source or documentation. I even do not know  
> wether the MIT license used by Hudson is compatible with the GPL.

The MIT license is compatible with basically everything.
Reimplementation from documentation is also legal. Clean room
implementation is also legal.

But the thing I'd like you to focus on is whether or not your code
enables proprietary embrace of my work. The primary thing people who
choose the GPL are looking to do is keep their work free and accessible.

Because the EPL allows proprietary expansions, it provides a good
launching point for adding MustHaveProprietaryFeatures that locks your
users into code they can't modify or share, fragments our community, and
gives us support headaches.

I'd encourage people who want to go down the route of making a non-GPL
hg library to stop short of adding direct write support. Not only does a
read-only implementation limit the avenues for exploitation, it also
minimizes the risk of introducing new compatibility and corruption
issues while still gaining most of the performance and integration
benefits (fast status and history browsing).

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