[development] Drupal's CVS policies... including 'foriegn' codein TinyMCE module?

[Jeff Robbins]

What exactly does "foreign code" mean?!? If we write it from scratch,  
it's not foreign, right? What if we copy some of the code from  
another GPL project? What if we only slightly modify another GPL  
project, perhaps just enough to make it work with Drupal? Well then  
it can't be downloaded from the original source. Are you telling me  
that this can't be included in the contrib repository? This sort of  
modification is the entire spirit of the GPL! It's about freedom and  
growth. By not allowing it into the repository, we are actually  
diverging from the spirit of the GPL.

How modified does a project need to be in order to be considered  
"native" Drupal code? I would submit that it DOES NOT need to be  
modified at all in order to be considered Drupal code. In the case of  
Drupal 5's JQuery, Drupal includes JQuery version 1.0.3 which is now  
fully deprecated in the JQuery community. Many of the JQuery plug-in  
maintainers do not continue to distribute plug-ins that function with  
1.0.x and so there is no way to link to these plugins and ask users  
to download them elsewhere. So in the form of the old versions of  
these plugins, we have unmodified code, that for all intents and  
purposes, only works with Drupal and can only be found in the Drupal  
code repository.

We have a great resource with the Drupal CVS repository. I think that  
we should be as accepting as possible in order to foster creativity  
and growth. The GPL and Source Forge both provide examples as to the  
spirit of this openness. I think we should take notes. The larger  
that Drupal becomes, the more "gray area" code will emerge. I believe  
the rules for code inclusion should be very very simple: All code  
must be GPLed.

Don't get me wrong, I would be ALL FOR allowing LGPLed code into the  
repository, but I also understand that the line needs to be drawn  
somewhere. But I think when people talk about *not* allowing at-one- 
time-external GPLed code into the Drupal repository, they're simply  
on crack.

-Jeff