On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 4:19 PM, Jose Gonzalez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Cedric wrote: >> On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 2:33 PM, Jose Gonzalez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> What are the reasons people prefer one type of license over another.. >>> and does that affect the number or quality of contributors or contributions? >>> Again, who knows. I don't like licenses in the software world - I think it's >>> abhorrent. >>> But unfortunately, their existance and that of patents is very real so >>> both corps and individuals have to make a decision. >>> Personally, I'd *never* contribute anything that I'd consider to be a >>> truly serious, dedicated, body of time and work to a project that wan't >>> LGPL or >>> GPL. But that's just me. >> >> I can share my experience too on this subject. In my previous company, >> it was a problem to contribute code back to a BSD licenced software >> (and GPL too). The lawyer and all the intellectual property guys would >> forbid us to give back code under this licence. In fact, only LGPL >> would have been a solution. That was the reason, why they choose GTK >> instead of anything else and without any technical consideration. >> To fix this problem, I changed for a smarter company. But that's just me >> :-) > > Smarter or not.. again, who really knows. Companies make their choices, > individuals make theirs.. each based on whatever set of reasons. Sometimes > those reasons are the same or similar, sometimes they're not. For me, it's > just a > personal decision.
That's true. I should have stated that using the EFL is only a technical decision. But this is not something common. And despite what others could think, I think you are raising a very good point. The way we handle this licence issue define how we handle our current community and how we will grow. We should compare on this aspect with other toolkit community. Both GTK and QT are around more or less as long as the E project exist. We are all around since a decade now. So looking at GTK. Their core component are LGPL based. Many company and individual are involing in this project, much more than in the E project. For the company, I know for sure that many choose GTK because of it's licence (all the big company that are ruled by intellectual property rather than technical staff will choose LGPL, that's really a fact). For individual, I think their is more people willing to contribute to a project if they know that others will be forced to help. But that's just an opinion, a feeling. Looking at QT. Their core component are GPL+proprietary licence. One company, trolltech, is acting like a proxy for others company and individuals. Contributing to the core is done mainly by Trolltech from what I know (tell me if I am wrong), but as a community of developper around this core, people benefit from the GPL effect and the growing contribution to any of it's part. Both GTK and QT have now a good marketing force with a strong community and part of this is due to this licence. Sure we could find others reasons for this difference, but let's look at our community. Our core component are BSD based licence. We are less than five people working now on the core (I include eet,evas,ecore,embryo and edje in this core). A few company are using the EFL, their code is most of the time proprietary, in some case they open it under LGPL and in a fewer case they contribute to this core library. Much more individuals are working with this core library and provide apps and library under the licence they feel including BSD, LGPL and GPL. So we are definitively not a community working on the EFL, but a community working with the EFL. We are not using them only to build E17 and our CVS is more a community repository where many apps end. And we should encourage the growth of this community. For this we should let our users choose the licence they want and continue to make our decision based on technical value. We never dictated the licence of our users, that's how I understand the choice of our licence for the core EFL. And I think we should continue to push this behaviour forward, by letting any new open source code go inside our CVS. That's how our community has grown in the past. But now that we have a decade of history, it's also a good time to think about what we want and expect for the core EFL. I want this community to continue to grow. I want more apps using the EFL. I want the core EFL to be improved, get faster, better and I really would like more contribution to the core. That's how I feel about this project. And I think that Jorge and Jose mail where all about that. And how we should act to improve the situation. I believe that puting the core EFL under a LGPL licence will help having more company backing us and more people contributing to the core. Eet, Embryo and Edje could be LGPL could be moved to LGPL without any problem for any of our users. Evas and Ecore could be LGPL also, as the engine are dynamically loaded and they are independent. Perhaps we could explicitely state that engine could stay proprietary as this could impact some of our users. But at the end I think, we have a lot to win by switching the licence of the core to LGPL and nothing to loose. This decision should have nothing to do with our religion about freedom, but what we expect from this community and how we want it to grow. It's not time for a flamewar, it's time to think and come with a plan for the growth of this community. I know they are more subjects than the licence, but this is the first and the one than will most likely impact our community growth and the strength of it's core. This decision will impact our users, that's true whatever it is. But this will not change the way people use it. Just the power we give to people using it. And if people have other idea to increase the strength of contribution to the core, it's time to raise you voice. -- Cedric BAIL ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ enlightenment-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/enlightenment-devel
