Jason,

  The Maui license is not an easy thing representing requirements of a number 
of parties.  I think the license could be moved over to something more 
palatable but that will take time.  Unfortunately, what I have learned is that 
the difficulty in changing a legal document grows exponentially relative to the 
length of time it has been in force and number of parties that are involved.  
That being said, we can try, but I am not optimistic of near-term turnaround.

  Another approach we tried is allowing more community direct involvement in 
Maui development and we had good initial success but found many of the 
contributions, while enhancing some aspects were breaking others for other 
users.  Attempts to work with contributors to get patches generalized enough to 
address the needs of the broader community bogged down because the contributors 
often needed local enhancements and did not have funding or motivation to 
modify the contributed patch beyond what was required for local consumption.  

  Something we haven't tried yet which may work for all parties would be to 
create one or more complete forks of the project and host it from the Cluster 
Resources sites.  With these forks, we could provide SVN access with remote 
ownership and remote read/write access.  We could likewise host WIKI's, 
Bugzilla, and other community infrastructure.  Organizations could then make 
enhancements as needed, court a like-minded body of users and contributors, and 
move forward without fear of breaking something for an odd site in far-off 
Chumba-Wumba.

  If this model is successful and substantial improvements are made, the owners 
of each fork would have the option of continuing forward independent in their 
private branch, or periodically working with the CRI team to roll in major 
improvements into the main fork Maui code.

  This should give freedom to innovate, with remote code control, allowing 
groups to develop fixes, features, and new architectures as needed.

  I understand this is not the same as open source code but it should be a big 
step in the right direction.  A vibrant community working on one or more of 
these Maui forks would also help in making the case for the effort associated 
with further steps toward opening the project further.

  Would this proposal be of interest?

Thanks,
Dave 


   
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jason Williams" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2009 10:26:22 AM GMT -07:00 US/Canada Mountain
Subject: [Mauiusers] Maui Full Open Source Fork?

Hello Everyone,

I am curious about something, and perhaps someone over at Cluster 
Resources could respond here.  I've read through the license file that 
is included in maui and have noticed that it's not a GPL license.  I'm 
not, by any means, a lawyer, but I am curious to know whether or not 
it's possible to completely release the source code for maui under a 
full Open Source Compatible license so that the community at large can 
take it and roll with it.  I'm afraid to start up a fork myself without 
someone at Cluster Resources blessing the process because the wording in 
the license is so odd to me.  But it seems to me that Cluster Resources 
may not be maintaining the code anymore, so would it be possible to let 
the Open Source Community do that under something along the lines of a 
GPL or other OSS Compatible license?  Just curious.

--
Jason Williams
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