Will you reconsider the CoronaVirus License?

Question

I am concerned that the addition of the CoronaVirus License text to the license will adversely affect business user adoption of a tool I have fought to have adopted in multiple organizations.

Have you obtained any legal review of the new license text? Have you obtained any review from the OSI?

Comments

https://www.coronavirus-symptoms.info according to the stats I think I would do that

Answer 1

Before answering your question, could you tell us in which countries you and your business users are located ? Thanks!

Comments

All of my clients are primarily US companies, with worldwide operations.

I'm in the US.

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Ok, great.

The OSI did not review our license. The text has been written by ourself. I completely understand that this is a big concern for you and your customer. I understand that this is highly uncommon and has a very negative impact on your work, especially if you have fight to let people adopt PlantUML (and we thank you for that).

So now the good news : this is very temporary. We will remove all our Coronavirus stuff on the 28th of March. We are going to precise this in the license itself (this is not done yet). The 29th of March, all those notice will be removed and everything is going back to normal.

And now the bad news : on the 29th of March, when all our warnings will be removed, you will have a lot of issues.

Do you see any pattern in the following curve ?

(taken from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us )

Note that the scale is logarithmic, which is a terrible bad news.

Look : the PlantUML team is located in France. A week ago, we were like you : something was happening in Italy, but we did not listen to it, we did not understand it. And now, everything is lockdown here. Something that sounds impossible a week ago.

I understand that all this sound crazy to you. I don't blame you at all : we were like you a week ago.

But PLEASE, read the facts :

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

It's coming to you.

As conclusion, the 29th of March we will remove all those nasty warning, but this will have no importance to you.

Thanks again and sorry for the long post.

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So now the good news : this is very temporary. We will remove all our Coronavirus stuff on the 28th of March. We are going to precise this in the license itself (this is not done yet). The 29th of March, all those notice will be removed and everything is going back to normal.

That addresses my primary concern.

And now the bad news : on the 29th of March, when all our warnings will be removed, you will have a lot of issues.

Let me be clear: I agree 120%. At that stage, we estimate that the rate of infection will be at least 500 per million. Our healthcare system is not up to the task, and our testing response is woefully nonexistant. 

My family is home. My coworkers are home. I'm telling everyone I can to stay home. 

I'm voting against the administration that dismantled our pandemic response capabilities and then lied about it. I hope that others reading this that are in a position to do so do the same.

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The bad news is that we do not have to wait until end of March to change our license. We've just published a new release (V1.2020.4) which rolls back to the regular license. https://plantuml.com/changes

My family is home. My coworkers are home. I'm telling everyone I can to stay home.

That's fine. However, be prepared that each states of the US are going to be lock down.

It has begun in San Francisco https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/17/us/us-coronavirus-san-francisco-lockdown/index.html

But other states are only few days behind California. No healthcare system can beat exponential rate : it's simply math.

Please explain this to your fellow citizens : all of them will be lockdown in few days. You have case in every state, meaning the virus is already there. It's the only solution, and the more you wait, the worst the situation will be. It's not panic : it's just explained here https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

Take care, and sorry again to have cross some red line on this subject.

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plantuml, thank you for putting the warning in, or outside of, the license.

I am watching the corona-virus spreading over the world in the last couple of weeks. But despite all signals (anybody reading the newspapers?) and my warnings most people around me aren't even aware of the impact this virus will have. Every warning people get might motivate them to take action and reduce the total impact (a bit).

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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." - Albert Allen Bartlett

Don't give up : please continue to warn people.Don't shout at them, only show them the facts. It's not a question a belief or religion : you just cannot beat exponential rate.

We've build this file that you can share to everyone : http://beta.plantuml.net/numbers.png

We will update it regulary, so numbers is here. Show them !!!! Please show them !!!! Ask them why they don't believe it. Ask them to their opinion, when the increase will stop, and why.

Let them write on a paper : "I understand that numbers of death are doubling every two days". Let them do the math.

USA is just 12 days behind Italy. It is well explained in the article here https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

If some serious lockdown is not put in place in the next 2 or 3 days, USA will make Italy sounds like a garden party.

If they still don't believe it, ask them if a week ago they would have believed that California will be completely lockdown and if New York City will be empty.

Has it ever happen in history ?

So if strange things are happening, why not a second state will not lockdown as California ?

Please don't give up !!! People will finally realize and each explanation is good !

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I am in the East Bay across from San Francisco. We are told to shelter in place and many ignore this, especially those under 35 who think they are immune or invincible. I spoke with the police today and they said they will not enforce any 'rules' for fear of it being branded as Marshall Law. In San Francisco the police are stricter and telling people to stop grouping and going out - but no penalty for widespread ignoring of Shelter In Place. There is the conspiracy theory that those in charge are allowing things to get to a point where everyone will realize the need for a full lockdown and then they can do it. I think more we just need a unified response (but strict and with a set time of say 4 weeks for all infections to be cought, isolated and treated) and real enforcement. We are not yet in log growth last week ~5 per day and now ~25. It seems to be coming though.

Oh yes, and thanks for the wonderful tool - now that I am furloughed I can work on a useful charity project!