2010/11/1 Giuseppe Castagno <[email protected]>: > Charles-H. Schulz wrote: >> >> Hello BRM, >> >> >> Le Thu, 28 Oct 2010 07:12:59 -0700 (PDT), >> BRM <[email protected]> a écrit : >> >>> ----- Original Message ---- >>> >>>> From: Charles-H. Schulz <[email protected]> >>>> 4) the notion that we cannot change license because we don't have >>>> copyright assignment needs to be put to rest once and for all >>>> today. There is a very simple explanation with respect to this > > [big snip] > >>> Perhaps the way around that is to require those contributing TDF to >>> use the "or later" language; though some may not want to. >>> >>> Even without copyright assignment the only thing standing in the way >>> of changing the license - whether to LGPLv4 or even GPLv3 or whatever >>> else - is getting the permission of _all_ the copyright holders. >> >> Good objection indeed! Actually, the problem is partly solved, since we >> now license our software under "LGPL v3 or later". At least it would be >> solved for the LGPL side of things. But my real answer here though, is >> perhaps more provocative: if Oracle changes the licence, do we really >> care? for the 3.3 we stick to the codebase of OOo, but I'm unsure we'll >> stick that much to it in further releases. In fact, I can already >> point out, looking at our development activity, that we're not taking >> the path of being "OpenOffice.org, just recompiled by the community". I >> think as the time will go by, we will diverge more and more and end up >> becoming quite different software. >>> >>> >From what I understand this is already impossible to do under Linux >>>> >>>> due to >>> >>> deaths of at least one contributor. >> >> Yes, and in this case a rewrite is needed. > > this can work in practice for small addendum, but what about bigger one? > > That may take some time. > > I implemented PDF/A-1a in OOo around 3 years ago > (http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/news_in_pdfexport), rewriting it > from scratch would not be a quick matter. > > And, my personal opinion only, years back I signed the then Sun (J)CA, I > will sign a TDF one or similar without problem. > > May be the CA should be on a voluntary basis. > > Just my 0,02 as a dev, and not a lawyer.
I can only add an example: Mozilla relicensing took "four and a half years, 445 contributors and 28522 files": http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/archives/2006/03/relicensing_complete.html And i think that OOo/LibO is one order magnitude (10 times) than Mozilla in terms of lines of code. bye, rob > > beppec56 -- Unsubscribe instructions: Email to [email protected] Posting guidelines: http://netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html Archive: http://www.documentfoundation.org/lists/discuss/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived ***
