Thank you for your clarification, Niall. I had indeed misunderstood what you
were trying to say, and I apologize for having overreacted.
Which doesn't mean that I agree with you. First, in order to avoid any
possible misunderstanding, let me say that I plan to use the (private,
non-EARN-owned) LEPICS CPU to work on LISTSERV, and not the CEARN 4341 which
is owned by EARN (well it's more complicated than that, but never mind). So
the "EARN infrastructure" we're speaking about is just the links.
Niall's argument is that, since I'd be using EARN links to distribute the
software, it ought to be available to EARN free of charge. If this rationale
were to be upholded, all software that is distributed on the network ought to
be made available to EARN free of charge. For example, if a scientist here
communicates with other scientists in the States, using EARN lines in the
process, to discuss the development of a new piece of thermocinetics software,
writes this software, and uses EARN again to distribute this software to US
sites, he ought to make it available to EARN free of charge should they be
interested to run it. Well, I'm sorry but I don't endorse this rationale.
In any case, my position on this subject is very clear: because of the way
things have been going recently, I am no longer willing to provide LISTSERV
service to EARN, regardless of whether they pay me for this or not (note: this
is a long-term decision, I am speaking about the days "after the contract gets
signed"); this may not apply to the individual SITES which are running
LISTSERV today and which have talked me (quite massively I must say) into
adding clauses to plan #1 allowing them to keep getting LISTSERV support from
me, possibly at a cost. This has not been included to provide a source of
money for me, and I'd be happy to remove it any time if there is a significant
amount of people who think it's unethical; all EARN LISTSERV sites would then
have to get the EARN-supplied maintenance.
If EARN has legal means to prevent me from making my (new-)LISTSERV work
available to BITNET free of charge while not allowing them to get it, fine,
there will be no Eric Thomas work on LISTSERV at all, and BITNET will have to
either negociate an agreement with EARN to get support from them (Welcome to
the World of EARN Politics!), make up their own volunteer support team, or
whatever. If the majority of people think it's unethical, same thing. BoD
members are, of course, excluded from the list of people whose opinion on this
subject will be taken into account, as I suspect their ethics to be somewhat
oriented on the I/O activity that would take place on their purse as a result
of either option.
Eric
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