On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 07:39:09PM -0200, Bruno Félix Rezende Ribeiro wrote: > Em Wed, 19 Nov 2014 14:05:53 -0700 (MST) > Jon Trulson <j...@radscan.com> escreveu: > > Now CDE is an open source project, but we would *really* like to avoid > > being forced into a specific license if at all possible - this is why > > we request MIT licensing. > > Here we have a problem. In the GNU project we are mainly concerned > with user's freedom. We believe the GPLv3+ is the appropriate license > for programs like the ones CDE is composed of. Our policy, however, > is of contributing to existing projects under their licenses, in order > to facilitate collaboration, unless our changes are big enough that > copylefting them is justifiable. Nonetheless, CDE is a particular > case since all its code is released under LGPLv2+, even if developers > are requiring contributions to be MIT[1][sic] licensed, and as so we > deem important to maintain its copyleft status.
At least one minor contribution (the script desktop2dt, which converts some *.desktop files to the type of file CDE expects) is under a permissive "MIT" license: # Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a # copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), # to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation # the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, # and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the # Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: # # The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in # all copies or substantial portions of the Software. # <insert standard disclaimer of warranty here> The copyright for this file is mine. I would like to let it be known that while I have indicated that the CDE project may relicense my work, the above license does not permit replacement with another license. If you fork CDE, you have all the permissions granted by the text of the license, but *not* the ability to relicense the script in question. I would also like to request, but not require, that the maintainer not relicense this file under a less permissive license. Considering that a script is interpreted, I'm not sure that there's much chance of copyleft vs. permissive making a difference for this file. But for me the benefits of making a script self-contained, so it could be copied to help someone without copying a separate license, outweigh the supposed benefits of copyleft (yes, I've read the GNU positions). And I'm ready to apply the same principle to my own standalone C code: what I wrote for my pleasure is out there regardless whether someone else provides source code, and the risk of careless violation of the license is of more concern to me. If someone grabs a copy of a binary without a license, then shares it with someone else, I don't want to be responsible for making it a violation of the license. Thanks for reading, Isaac Dunham ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download BIRT iHub F-Type - The Free Enterprise-Grade BIRT Server from Actuate! Instantly Supercharge Your Business Reports and Dashboards with Interactivity, Sharing, Native Excel Exports, App Integration & more Get technology previously reserved for billion-dollar corporations, FREE http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=157005751&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ cdesktopenv-devel mailing list cdesktopenv-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/cdesktopenv-devel
