future of HgKit

[Matt Mackall]

On Sat, 2009-10-03 at 20:39 +0200, Andrey Somov wrote:
> > 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).
> > 
> 
> Yes indeed, a read-only implementation can support basic continuous 
> integration with Hudson (just to clone the source).
> But please keep in mind that for a successful build sometimes we need to 
> change the source (Maven release plugin). Both Ant and Maven have Apache 
> license. GPL does not fit here.

Funny how make(1) has no problem with this. Once again I'm forced to
wonder out loud if Java has a system() call. Perhaps it's
under-documented.

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