RFC: Drop GoAHead / cpukit/httpd webserver?

[Chris Johns]

Eric Valette wrote:
> On 18/11/2009 07:47, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> The SC is considering to drop the GoAHead webserver (aka. cpukit/httpd)
>> from rtems-4.10, because
>>
>> * its upstream appears dead (IIRC, they went closed source)
> 
> Well in fact it resurfaced as appweb <http://www.appwebserver.org/>
> 
> 
>> * its license is somewhat problematic.
> 
> appweb too as GPL...
> 

Thanks Eric. The following is not specifically directed at you rather they are 
general questions we should consider.

Did they obtain the rights to the code from the original developers ? I can 
only assume they must have to change the license and then offer a commercial 
license. If they did I wonder where this leaves us ? We are in effect 
releasing something that is almost the same and we are improving under a 
different license.

This whole site leaves me concerned. They state the license is GPL but you can 
obtain a commercial license which has a page headed "Commercial License 
Benefits". Huh did I miss something about open source ? To me this is not open 
source. I would not use it because any fixes or improvements I release would 
have to be licensed to them to be included up stream so they can enforce the 
commercial license otherwise they would have to include all contributors in 
the commercial agreements and that is commercially silly.

I think GoAhead should be removed from the tree on these grounds alone.

Chris