On Sat, 2003-06-21 at 13:48, Greg Meyer wrote: > On Saturday 21 June 2003 03:53 pm, James Sparenberg wrote: > > > > The problem comes that the version released by MDK for 9.1 seems to > > possibly be the last version.... The website and the developer have for > > all intents and purposes dropped off the net for the last 30-45 days, or > > more.(even the hosting agency is no longer in business it seems.) I've > > tried to find/ contact this person to find out status to no avail. Now > > I'm faced with a question. At what point is it ethical to fork someones > > code? > > Any time you want. The GPL by definition says you can do whatever you want > with the code in terms of modifying it or redistributing it. Anybody that > puts software out under the GPL is aware of this and should not be upset if > someone decides to fork. > > > > > 1. When would it be permissible to fork without the original authors > > knowledge? > > Why not?, especially if you can't find him. If he was still around and > developing, it would be nice to submit your changes to see if he would > include them in the main project, but if he rejected the change, you could > patch the source yourself and move forward. > > > 2. For the sake of completeness. Would taking it to a dual license > > (like say MySQL) be ethical? > > > > I think the GPL makes it ethical to do whatever you want with respect to > creating a fork, although I am unsure about the dual-license bit. Mandrake > put MNF under a dual-license after the stuff had been GPL'd already, so I > suppose it is possible. Are you thinking a commercial icense with support > and no mod rights for paying customers and a GPL'd version with nothing but > code?
Something along that line paying customers get support, code and our immediate attention ... then anything worthwhile goes into the GPL'd version. Very much like what MySQL does for us. Or perhaps like Sendmail (Free version is a step behind commercial) That part is up to our marketing people once we have properly gaged community reaction. I'm concerned that in order to dual license it, I'd need the original author's (and all contributors) permissions. If this is the case. Guess it stays GPL. James
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