Peter S Galbraith wrote: > Richard Braakman wrote: > > Hmm. Patches are usually submitted under the same license as the > > original work. I can't think of any exceptions I've ever seen. > > So if that is all he wants, an X-like license would be fine. > > That would allow him to do whatever he wanted with the patches, > including incorporating them into commercial software, right?
Right. > But that would allow anyone to do the same. He wants to avoid > someone taking his work (without compensation), slapping a GUI on > top on it and selling it as a Windows app or something. The X > license would allow that. But he wants to do exactly that with contributed code? :) Yes, that requires an asymmetric license. The ones I know about are the QPL and the NPL. > He was almost ready to use the GPL, but I pointed out that once > people send in patches his work is no longer his alone. He can't > turn around, modify the work and sell it without hunting through > for all patches and re-writing them. But you say below that he doesn't expect a significant amount of patches. Make up your mind ;-) > > I bet that would attract more people than the QPL would. > > The QPL is patches-only; > > We thought of _modifying_ the QPL (say to remove the patch > clause) but the author thought that would create yet another > license for people to parse, etc. Indeed. Also, the QPL does not allow this. On the other hand, I have heard that the text of a contract cannot be copyrighted. > > I would certainly avoid any program > > under that license. > > That's certainly your choice, but rarely the upstream author's > loss. This program has been `available' to the oceanographic > community for close to ten years, but 99% of it (or more) is > still the upstream author's code. I don't think that the threat > of reduced hacker code input is an argument for him since it > hasn't been a driving factor so far. Then why does he want the program to be free? If he doesn't expect code input, then perhaps because he wants many people to use it -- people who would not use a non-free program. I think he could get even more people to use it if he uses something freer than the QPL. > Is the patch clause your major hurdle? Or the fact that he could > use your 0.1% contribution for profit? The patches-only clause. I don't consider such code to be free. (Notice how carefully I said DFSG-free in my first mail :-) Richard Braakman
