> I have emailed him few weeks  before Trolltech has  announced that  Trolltech
> are switching from QPL to dual license (GPL. & QPL) - if he would have treated
> this mail, we probably wouldn't  have GNOME today, and we wouldn't have 2
> teams working on  desktop enviroments..

You know, had I listened to all the people telling me of better ways to do
a Hebrew spell-checker, or told me of other people who have non-free spell-
checkers that could probably be swayed to make their spell-checker free,
we would still not have a Hebrew spell-checker today.

So far none of the other competing methods resulted in an available Hebrew
spell-checker, and none of the non-free spell-checkers (e.g., Rav-Milim,
and various projects done in Israeli universities) were actually made free
or published.
And 3 years have passed since I announced my detailed plans to write "hspell".

So sometimes developers of free software *should* stick to their guns, take
risks, and not desert ship before the fog clears. And even if when the fog
clears we are left with two alternatives solutions, it's not such a huge loss.
In a few years, either one solution will sink (like most people don't remember
Tcl/Tk, or even Xt and Motif, nowadays), or if there's enough merit in both
both will remain (the Emacs/Vi war is raging on for almost 20 years).

Richard Stallman said in his lecture (and I don't know if he's right, but
I guess he has all the data...) that we no longer have problems in finding
people to write free software. So it's not such a huge loss if some work is
duplicated. I'm not saying all work should be duplicated 10 times (like is
happening in the commercial software world), but if parts of it is done
a couple of times - it's not that horrible.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |      Monday, Jan 13 2003, 10 Shevat 5763