But, what makes me feels so ironic is... Why that time no one to backport that, and suddenly want to backporting PL's package which is have an ambiguous license. That time KZDesktop was a perfect candidate, it's an opensource project and it's a LGPL license. This is so weird.
What steps did you take to integrate KZDesktop to Lazarus?
Did you offer patches?
Or did you just tell other people to do the work for you
because you say so?
That is not how open source works. Basically all developers scratch their own itches. There are thousands of missing features and bugs to work on. Nobody is paid to work on them, except for some one-time bounties for a specific task.
I personally supported backporting the CT form editor for 2 reasons:
1. I heard it works while the Sparta editor does not.
2. I wanted to make people realize the principle of FOSS development. Copy, modify and spread shamelessly. That is the essence of GPL.
Number 2 didn't end well. The reaction from Sternas was a surprise and disappointment for me of course.
How did we come into this situation? I remember many years ago Sternas was on this forum discussing and answering questions. Many people praised improvement in CT compared to Lazarus. There was a sense of healthy competition. I believe they had some omitted or altered copyright texts also then but there was no war around the issue.
Suddenly the atmosphere changed. People started to attack them and call them names. There were false accusations. They allegedly removed license texts from Lazarus+LCL and 3rd party components. It was a lie. I finally checked their Lazarus+LCL fork and some other components. All license headers were intact.
Some people explained they break the license because they don't offer their changes back to Lazarus as patches. GPL has no such rule in reality.
Some people admitted they follow the license but they are morally wrong. WTF!!!
What triggered this avalanche? Mostly it was the blogs of one Norwegian person. People respected him because he is a good programmer and he can write well to agitate people. Most of his claims were lies. I remember one "
there is an international law to have a Subversion server". No there isn't.
He didn't have any own code to protect from Pilot Logic, he just enjoyed seeing people fight a war after he manipulated them. (Actually he claimed his code was stolen but refused to give details...)
This all proved something about a human nature. A FOSS license clearly gives too much freedom, people started to pull new "amendments" from their hats for it. Most people didn't check facts but just repeated accusations from other people.
Unfortunately Pilot Logic was guilty of some removed or changed copyright texts. A copyright and a license are two different things but copyright is very important because a copyright holder can define and change the license.
I understood there are still some omissions and border cases like changing "Lazarus Developers Team" into "Typhon Developers Team" in copyright.
The latest form editor episode ... I am not sure if their own license is legal because of some loophole in GPL text, and honestly I don't care. I have better things to do. The attitude of Sternas is clearly caused by all mudslinging he and his company got. He blames Lazarus people because some people claimed they represent Lazarus.