[Spread-users] Public CVS?

[Jonathan Stanton]

On Mon, Sep 17, 2001 at 03:37:49PM -0700, Sean Chittenden wrote:
> Strange, I don't know of any other than this one that has made it an 
> issue and hasn't granted anon access at the first request... anyway, 
> I'll be the asshole corporate agenda antagonist that hopes this isn't 
> the reason why you're denying access or are at least regulating it:
> 
> As a capitalist, I want to use spread and include its copyright notice
> in my product(s), but I don't want you to know that I do because I'd be
> hugely ticked if someone decided to change the license again and make it
> commercial.  Simple enough.  I'm surprised no-one else has had the balls
> to come out and say it, esp given the offline discussions that I've been
> involved with.  Spread kicks ass and those that realize the potential of
> the academic work are eager to use and promote its use where applicable.  
> So there, it's out in the open.  Anonymous CVS is both a blessing for
> anonymity for corporate folks (which it isn't because CVS can log anon
> access and should make the spread project maintainers happy) and for Joe
> Schmoe developer who wants to track the project and submit diffs w/o
> jumping through hoops.

OK. Maybe I'm not conspiracy minded enough, but I didn't quite follow
this... If you mean that corporate types could use Spread and not give us
credit or notice and lie about it, then yes, they can, they always can,
and my view is that you will never win dealing with cheaters and liars as
they will always be better and it then I want to be. So I want to minimize
their negative impact on me (and CNDS and SC) and spend my time working
with honest people and reputable companies who know that our work together
can be a 'win-win' deal (as the business types and game-theorists say)

Even our current form can never force honesty, only request people to
volunteer information. So if some corporation wants to be anonymous and
doesn't want to help us, they just fill it in with 'aa at aa' and download it
from someone's home dsl line and how will we ever know. 

The difference is if you do ask, lots of people are honest and will
provide the information, but if you don't ask, they will not go ahead and
just send you the information on their own.

Jonathan
-- 
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Jonathan R. Stanton         jonathan at cs.jhu.edu
Dept. of Computer Science   
Johns Hopkins University    
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