Mozilla Thunderbird

[Keith Irwin]

On Sun, 2005-01-02 at 08:47 +0000, Sean Miller wrote:

> The fact that Ximian Evolution is now called "Novell Evolution" and is 

When I hit the "about" menu item, I see "Evolution 2.1.2, Groupware
Suite, (c) 1999-2004 Novel, Inc, and Others. Except for the groupware
account type, I don't think the word "novel" appears elsewhere in the
actual product.  Just marketing trumpets?

> now being promoted as an integral part of the "Novell Linux Desktop" 
> which is far from GPL, would worry me if I were Ubuntu...

Evolution is part of Gnome both of which are GPL.  The GPL has nothing
to do with any marketing claims Novell might make and in fact, protects
code from being taken by Novell and made proprietary.

These are the freedoms:

        The freedom to run the program, for any purpose. 
        
        The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your
        needs. 

        The freedom to redistribute copies.
        
        The freedom to improve the program, and release your
        improvements to the public, so that the whole community
        benefits. 
        
Nothing about price or marketing claims.  Novel can charge $1000 a pop
for a gold-plated disk with gold-leaf documentation.  It's still GPL,
and we still have those freedoms.

(I'm not sure about being able to fork a GPL product and take it
proprietary. I think it's illegal.)

> How long until, having tied Evolution in more closely with their desktop 
> products, Novell decide to charge for it.

In fact, Novell open-sourced the exchange connector which had previously
been proprietary, a small money generator for Ximian.  Since then,
they've created the Groupwise plug-in for integration with their own
suite of projects, and I believe that plugin is also GPL.

I don't think Novell has anything to gain using Microsoft tactics and
everything to lose.  As the concerns expressed by the people on this
thread amply illustrate, one of the biggest marketing advantages of
Linux is that it doesn't allow for the kind of strong-arm, bundling,
integration tactics Microsoft has (hopefully had) been able to use.

> In contrast Thunderbird, and the Mozilla Project, is still firmly 
> committed to GPL.

I think these products are great.  I use them.  But the Gnome folks are
striving in every way possible (and experimenting, making mistakes,
retrenching, trying again, learning from the Apple wizards, etc) to make
using Gnome easier and easier, to lowering the barrier of entry for
potential customers for and users of a Linux desktop.



> Sean
>