Alan DuBoff wrote:
Speculating about participation based on a license is far fetched. There are many other things that would help assist that more than a license, such as Source Code Management, Bug Reporting, and full access to all Sun cases (if that piece is not done already, I think much of ARC is).
I completely agree. Based on my experience with hundreds of free software projects, I've seen a variety of different licenses work out for communities. The only caveat I would add is that it's very possible to go to a more liberal license and acquire more community participation. However, it almost never works going the other way - going to a more restrictive license almost never works and in fact is a good way to split a community. For an example of the latter, see the ill-fated XFree86 licensing change.
In general, the biggest deciding factor in this is whether a project leader(s) adds real value and interacts with the community in good faith, not what license is chosen from the outset. If you go with GPLv3, I'm betting dollars to donuts that whatever compatibility issues pop up between GPL versions will be rendered null and void for the simple fact that it's in everyone's interest to make them utterly compatible.
-John Mark Walker Hyperic Community Outreach http://www.hyperic.com/ _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
