Stewart Stremler wrote: > begin quoting John H. Robinson, IV as of Mon, Aug 22, 2005 at 09:25:40AM > -0700: > > Stewart Stremler wrote: > [snip] > > > Assigning rights back to the owner lets you do this as well, but > > > that is seen as objectionable to a lot of people these days. > > > > Presumably, because the author can turn into a moocher and take your > > code you assigned over and turn into a proprietary license. I don't > > trust even the FSF to not pull a stunt like that. > > So if a rider were allowed -- say, "if you contribute code that is accepted, > then so long as that code is in the product, you will have your existing > license applied to the product" -- people would have much less of a problem?
If you own the code you contribute, you have a say in your code getting relicensed. This is why the FSF encourages projects with multiple people to say ``GPL v2 or later'' instead of ``GPL v2''. This way the license can be ``upgraded'' w/o having to go to foreach ($TEAMMEMBER) for permission to change the license. So, I think the answer to your question is ``yes.'' > As I see it, we have two fears -- one, that the author will turn into a > moocher, and two, the users will be nothing but moochers -- but only one > seems to be addressed at a time. Are they both addressable? Or do we have to seek a middle ground somewhere? Is it a cd speed/case colout thing, or more of a security/convenience thing? > So long as I know that I'm assigning my improvements back to the > original author when I send them to 'em, I actually have no problem with > this "mooching"... if I were concerned, I wouldn't send in any changes. > (It's not like anyone ever uses 'em anyway.) I've had my patches applied upstream (WindowMaker and MRTG). I don't have much of an issue for small patches. It could be an issue if it was a larger patch, like say adding SSL to a client/daemon, or adding a new filesystem to a non-modular linux distro installer. Those I might be more interested in keeping under a license I like. > When the author/vendor makes it easy to provide feedback, ideas, bug > reports, and improvements -- and then acknowledges your contribution -- > it's a joy to do so, even if you give up your "rights". When they make > it difficult, and then disregard your contribution, it's hard to justify > the effort, even if it's "more free". Agreed. This is why I avoid anything that uses bugzilla. > (One of the reasons I want competition is that it provokes the > customer-oriented attitude. When you're the only player, arrogance is > well-nigh unavoidable; when your users have a choice to go elsewhere > with relatively little pain, you play a lot nicer.) Monopolies suck. Unregulated ones even moreso. -john -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
