Re: A proposal (ox-html.el/ox-odt.el)

[wgreenhouse-sGOZH3hwPm2sTnJN9+BGXg@public.gmane.org (W. Greenhouse)]

Jambunathan,

Jambunathan K <kjambunathan-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> writes:

> People are disregarding my "moral rights" over my work and pushing me in
> a corner to act a certain way to serve their own interests.  This I feel
> is plain wrong and an act of snatching or appropriation.
>
> Jambunathan K.

Moral right and copyright are unrelated concepts.  In the jurisdictions
that recognize "author's moral right" or "droit moral" (much of the EU
and other civil-code countries), such right is non-assignable and would
not even be affected by the FSF papers.  However, in the jurisdictions
where copyright is assignable, it has nothing to do with author's moral
right.

If we're going to discuss "moral right" in the less legalistic and more
broad sense of your rights in an ethical society as a person with
agency, I think you're disregarding the rights of prior contributors to
the ox-html program, of which you were but one of many.  Those
contributors did intend the code to become part of Emacs, and, morally
as well as legally, you entered into an agreement to further that aim
when you decided to work on it.  If you really do intend to take your
ball and go home, do please call a fork a fork--and also do please
recognize that you are the one "snatching" or "appropriating" a joint
work out of your own sense of pique.

> I want to fork ox-html.el and ox-odt.el (as it stands today in Org repo)
> to GNU ELPA repo.  I request that Emacs maintainers recognize the GNU
> ELPA version (maintained by me) as the authoritative official versions
> of these files that gets bundled with SUMO Emacs.

...

>
>   Jambunathan
>     +---------------+
>     |  ox-html.el   +---  push               Emacs maintainer
>     |  ox-odt.el    |   \-----
>     |  GNU ELPA     |         \-----    +--------------------+
>     |               |               \-->|                    |
>     +---------------+                   | lisp/org/ox-html.el|
>            ^  Push                      | lisp/org/ox-odt.el |
>            |                            |                    |
>            |                            +--------------------+
>            |                            | Other org files    |
>     +------+---------+               /->|                    |
>     |                |           /---   |                    |
>     |     Org repo   |      /----       |                    |
>     |                |  /---            +--------------------+
>     |                +--  push
>     |                |
>     |                |
>     +----------------+
>      Org maintainer


This makes no sense at all.  It is needless busywork for the Emacs
maintainer to integrate code from one particular contributor who is unable
to cooperate with the maintainer of the project to which he
contributes.  It also unnecessarily inconveniences ordinary Emacs/Org
users, who would now face a further obstacle to simply using the
software.  They already have to go elsewhere to get contrib/ programs
or to use the latest version of Org; now you want to make it so that
even the release version of Org is fractured and schismed.  That is
totally unacceptable.

-- 
Regards,
WGG