Center white paper

[Ivan Denisov]

"commercial" license means "commercial software"? and commercial responsibility? OR "the software that can be used in commercial aims with close codes (like BSD-2 license)"?

I think that center should be non-profit workers association with "enterprise-grade, freely available software products".

[ReneK]

In Russia person can own web-site, collect money and own intellectual properties. However more honest to register organization, for any member feel him self equal in "center".

Thank you for the clarification, Ivan. Here in Austria, a person can also own property and register sites, but it will then be the person's property, not the group's. Thus the group would always be dependend on the legal owner's goodwill.

For a group to own, the group needs to be incorporated legally.

While it may not be that pressing to decide now, in what form we could or should incorporate, it will be a decision for the future.

"commercial" license means "commercial software"? and commercial responsibility? OR the software that can be used in commercial aims with close codes (line BSD-2 license)?

Misunderstanding. I wrote:

We operate under a licence to make it easy for all users, commercial and individual, to deploy our products.

So, the licence must make it possible for end-users of BlackBox to produce commercial software, if they so want.

This does not in any way suggest that the BlackBox Framework itself should operate under a commercial licence , or that we would be legally responsible for real world problems effected by bugs in the framework.

[Ivan Denisov]

This does not in any way suggest that the BlackBox Framework itself should operate under a commercial licence , or that we would be legally responsible for real world problems effected by bugs in the framework.

Now, I understood, thanks!

To prevent misunderstanding better to point exact license name, "BSD 2-clause license" is Ominc choice and we can continue this way.

[Ivan Denisov]

Thank you for the clarification, Ivan. Here in Austria, a person can also own property and register sites, but it will then be the person's property, not the group's. Thus the group would always be dependend on the legal owner's goodwill.

If you put group (community) copyright it means the group authorship properties.

If you make the patent, It does not matter who done the work (in Russia, not in France where software can not be patented), but it should not be public before applying for patent. That is not our case, because all the work are planned to be public (from my point of view).

So no patents can be made, but no problem with group authorship. You should not register any organization for this.

HOWEVER in future organization are necessary from emotional reasons and in case of big donation activity.

[ReneK]

Also I think that we should not only aim at Russian law. So in the distant future we might need to deal with at least EU and US law.

But consider this: Currently OMI probably holds the trademark BlackBox Component Builder. There might come the time when OMI wants to transfer this trademark to someone else.

In OpenSource projects, this happens. Think, for instance, of OpenOffice, which was transferred from Sun to Apache.org. Basically the same situation we face. A company starts an OpenSource endeavor and later decides to distance itself from it. They transfer rights to someone else.

Without legal body, OMI could not transfer any rights to us, no matter if OMI were willing or not.

As I said, I do not think that this is a topic *right away*, but it may and it will become one. We have to be aware of it. And it is by far not only a question of emotional feelings.

[ReneK]

Robert, Douglas,

aside from the legal formulation and the (now solved) point about next release, is there anything else in the proposal so far that needs changing (omission or addition) so that you can identify with this vision?

Peter, Ivan,

what's your vision? Do you have one of your own at the ready or do you want to convey your vision by changing something in "my" proposal? (I feel uncomfortable calling it "mine", when it is already changed because of input from Douglas and Robert, and both said that there is much there to what they can agree; yet, I do not want to call it "the" proposal, because this would give it too much weight when 7 out of 10 members so far have not said anything about it and could and/or should voice their own vision. Thus "mine" seems better than "the" IMHO, and I hope you all can take it in the spirit of this caveat)

[Ivan Denisov]

Rene, I am totally agree with your Vision.

A little change in version of: What is the Blackbox Center?

The "Blackbox Center" is the non-profit voluntarily association dedicated to the mission, the vision and the values of Blackbox Center. Today, it is a de facto board of self-organized BlackBox developers, users and potential project managers. In the future, it could be necessary to transform the Center to a single entity, in order to provide better legacy basis for framework support, accumulation of donations and limitation of potential legal exposure of single project members. The members spearhead projects that, through a collaborative and meritocratic development process deliver enterprise-grade freely available software products that attract large communities of users. We operate under BSD 2-clause license to deploy our product to make it easy for commercial and individual usage.

I have updated the draft in wiki. It looks very nice. I will try to keep it in sync with a discussion here. But if someone wanted to help, please login.

[ReneK]

Thank you, Ivan. I purposefully left the details of the licence open (though for sure this is an important point of the white paper!), because I didn't have the current licence at hand, under which OMI grants us right of usage and adaption. We cannot, I believe, switch licence to a modle incompatible with what OMI granted.

I still haven't looked it up yet, so it might well be that it currently is a BSD 2-clause license, and then your addition is fine. But if not, then we will have to adapt this.

[Robert]

I've looked at the Wiki. First the trivia, then some minor personal suggestions:

- Please write BlackBox, not Blackbox.
- Please write Oberon microsystems (lower case 'm').
- In the first line replace 'voluntarily' by voluntary'.
- Replace 'attract large' with 'that are attractive to large'.
- Replace 'easy for commercial' with 'accessible for commercial'.
- '(the "Oberon Spirit".' is missing a ')'.
- Vision / Mission. Should these be separate ideas? The Vision paragraph starts "The mission .. is .." The words, if not the ideas, are a bit mixed up.
- "Every vote needs the option ...". No 's' at the end of option.
- "To make sure each member voted"? But only 80% need to vote. Something is not quite right here.


Visions of development ... Add something like?

"The following sections illustrate possible projects and priorities for the future for BlackBox. These visions will mature and evolve in the light of experience and input from the wider user community."


I also wonder if we should mention two classes of SubSystem with different statuses. I am thinking of the current situation where we have the Oms subsystems that we expect all users to have, and which have a certain (high) quality standard (whatever exactly quality means!). We also have the SubSystems / Modules on the CPC site with a more limited uptake, and some (most!) have a lower quality standard (less good reliability, coding style, documentation, maintenance and upkeep, whatever!).

Issues to be addressed, ultimately, are our relationship to CPC, and taking over maintenance of the BlackBox repository list that Oms keeps to avoid SubSystem name clashes.

Finally, does anyone have a suggestion for 'our' (ie group 2) name. I see three groups of people:
1- All users of and contributors to the BlackBox project and software.
2 - Active contributors to the BlackBox mission.
3 - The centre, who strive to enable group 2 with organisation, policy, tools, reviews, ... .
We have a name (maybe not a very good name!) for group 3. I think it would also be helpful to have a name for group 2. Group 1I suggest we call the "BlackBox Community".

[Ivan Denisov]

I've looked at the Wiki. First the trivia, then some minor personal suggestions:

I have tried to apply most of your fixes. I have no idea about CPC and groups names yet, so do not add this.

I have mentioned that Treutwein add info about Center ("small community") in Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Pascal