David Strip <[email protected]> writes: > License monkey business isn't viable in any way with > GDAL. It would just create confusion and erode trust, which we > can't get back if broken.
Strongly agreed. > gdal wouldn't be the first project to change it's license, though I > really don't know enough about the consequences others have faced > for doing so. Even the revered GPL is a moving target. > If the alternative is a burned out lead developer/maintainer and a > dead project, that's not a desirable outcome either. My impression is that every project that has tried to play games with open source licenses has basically been a one-company project, and that this has led to shunning. > I'm not sure I agree that changing the license would create > confusion and erode trust. Assuming that we (whoever "we" are) > actually have the legal right to change the license, let's play a > hypothetical. The only projects that can arbitrarily change license are those in which The copyright is held my one company or a small number of people. This is why projects that pretend to be open source and ask for assignment of rights to a company are problematic. There are a small number of contributors who would agree. Projects that are e.g BSD licensed that want to move to GPL. The old code remains, but the new code has a copyleft. > The new license maintains fees from two classes of users: > 1. Anyone incorporating gdal into a product that is > a. not completely open source, and > b. charges a license fee (perpetual or subscription), and > c. has more than x active licenses (x = 500? 1000?) > 2. Any for-profit organization utilizing gdal in-house for data > analysis, conversion, on-line services, etc, in excess of x CPU > hours per year (where y = 1000? 5000?...) > 3. Any organization that uses gdal indirectly through a free, open > source product (eg, QGIS) or a licensed product covered under 1) > above is exempt from 1) and 2). That's obviously no longer open source. > I don't think I need to name names - you know who the big players > are in categories 1 and 2. Only two in category 1 and none in > category 2 stepped up with a large (relative to the ask) commitment > in the previous barn raising. I think you should name names. It's not helpful to pretend we shouldn't. > Equally, the vast majority of users will have no question that they > continue to operate in the free range. Given that this whole thing > started with a suggestion that the only way to make users aware of > deprecation of obsolete drivers was to make the drivers stop > working, how many users will even be aware of a license change? This will cause binary gdal packages, and everything that depends on them, to get kicked out of first-class status or dropped from many packaging systems.
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
_______________________________________________ gdal-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/gdal-dev
