[CA cert] An apology and an announcement

[Duane <duane AT cacert.org>]

Firstly I apologies for my behaviour for what I can only describe as a 
monumental misunderstanding which I've been kicking myself all day 
about. I especially apologies to Greg, over the miscommunication and not 
being able to communicate the original intentions better.

My actions were hasty and wrong and for that I'm sorry. My first mistake 
was in my email the other day, I worded it badly to say the least, and 
then things went from bad to worst based on presumptions. My question 
should have been what does a license such as the GPL hold over a license 
such as PGP source style one in this particular instance.

The only practical difference between the two seems to be the ability 
for someone to compete with us using our code base. To answer those that 
suggest the code needs to continue living even in the event of CAcert 
dying, I still plan to assign copyright to CAcert once the new board is 
elected, so the simple answer to this is that a rule change of the 
Association be passed that says if CAcert dissolves, then copyright will 
automatically be assigned to the Free Software Foundation.

So with that out of the way I'm happy to announce that we, as a 
community, can move forward in the direction of making the code 
available for inspection and to solicit contributions from the 
programming community to address new features, enhancements and yes, 
even bugs!

The code will initially be available as a tar ball, and the code will be 
made available under a modified PGP license (See 
http://www.CAcert.org/src-lic.php for details). At this juncture I don't 
think that GPL is the best option for CAcert, as it would, in my 
opinion, only serve to allow ourselves to be undermined, and reduce our 
ability to advocate CAcert's inclusion in major browsers and other 
projects. Later decisions about license changes for the code will be up 
to the board, however I think the right thing to do now is move ahead 
with at least a compromise, rather then stay at a stand still.

To facilitate feedback in the form of contributions, patch submissions
and discussions in the technical community, a new Developer's list has
been created: http://lists.cacert.org/mailman/listinfo/cacert-devel

Those that already have access to the code, myself included, will take 
some time to review the code before the first tar ball is released, so I 
expect to be able to post a tar ball on the website at some stage next 
week.  Once this has happened, a link to the download will be placed on 
the CAcert site, and to the CAcert-devel list.

--

Best regards,
 Duane

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