[csw-users] blastwave forked?

[Dagobert Michelsen]

Hi Laurent,

Am 11.09.2008 um 22:06 schrieb Willie:
> How
> low does someone have to sink before your sense of right and wrong,
> assuming you have one, overtakes your sense of "self"?

The problem is that it is often hard to decide wether something
is right or wrong. Do you know the movie "Falling Down" or
"Dogville"? Are the chief character and the inhabitants good or evil?
The funny thing is, you can walk a straight path where every
step is well thought and end up in a position you never wanted
to be in. And yet decide you would walk that same path again.

> I find it interesting that Phil Brown makes little attempt to refute
> Dennis Clarke's allegations.

Maybe he doesn't care any more, maybe he thinks it's pointless,
I don't know. But does that mean Dennis' accusitions are right?
I at least answer back every time Dennis' incriminations against
me when he is wrong.

> His seems more of an effort to justify
> events.
> To some degree I can see his point, since Dennis certainly
> doesn't own all that software on the blastwave servers. Or does he? I
> may be missing something crucial here; is/was the software served from
> blastwave.org open source or not?

They are of course open source. But that doesn't necessarily
mean Blastwave has no rights in it. As this touches international
law about intellectual property things get even more complicated.
 From my understanding the package authors always has the copyright
and therefore the right to relicense his own code to every use
he likes. However, the build descriptions were derived from GAR
which was released under GPL, so I guess the build descriptions
are also under GPL.

> If so, surely it shouldn't even have
> been possible for Dennis to hold jurisdiction over the resource.

Well, he owns the machines, the domain and has root. Until recently
the project never questioned the concentration of critical
infrastructure to one person.

> Regardless of the answer, the way Phil went about things leaves a  
> stench
> I can't ignore. With regard to the misappropriation of the  
> blastwave gpg
> key, this maillist, and hacking of the DNS boxes, I'd have no problem
> seeing him behind bars.

Neither Phil nor Dennis is a saint or devil. I am astonished
how easy you decide for yourself what is good and what is wrong
by just reading a few posts. 9/10 of an iceberg are under
water, you think that is different here?

> I maintain that it's a sorry state of affairs when such clearly
> brilliant people can't muster enough civility to resolve a situation
> before it disrupts the lives of so many others, even if it means going
> their separate ways in an amicable fashion.

The atmosphere on the maintainer list was bad for a long time
now and a few times before the fork has been avoided, sometime
only very closely - until recently, where the cracks couldn't
be filled any longer. But again: from the distance all this
looks easy and simple. It is not.

   -- Dago