On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 4:04 PM, snitko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> I won't guess what snitko wants to do (his list of reasons may or may >> not be comprehensive), but I will say that snitko should choose a >> license which is appropriate for his goals. For better or worse his >> stated goals aren't really legally enforceable. > > Before publishing I talked to some guys and they said publish it under > GPL. I looked through the license and it seemed good enough for it. > Personally, I give a damn about licenses and stuff, they really make > me bored. I don't think there's someone now willing to steal the code > to make a competitor web-service, but I certainly would not like that > to happen. So if you have any suggestions about the license to use, > I'd be grateful.
I don't know if I could recommend a license... I'm not a lawyer and all that. I will say that I don't believe there exists an OSS license which would prevent someone from starting a competitive site using your code. The only all the open source licenses I'm aware of would control is under what circumstances would they have to release their code changes back to you & the world. I can say this from personal experience: Making code open source (regardless of the license) doesn't magically cause people to contribute to your project. That takes a community of individuals who want to solve a shared problem. IMHO, if you're looking for people to help you with the project, then your best bet is probably to seek out qualified developers (or people interested in learning) within your existing user base who already find it useful and would like to give back. There are only two reasons I can think of that someone would download your code and do anything with it: 1) They want to help you out 2) They want to start their own site using your code You could easily have people email you to get access to the code for #1 and filter out people interested in #2 all without releasing the code under the GPL, etc. I will say this though. Either GPL your code or have people assign their copyright to you. I was involved in a web project where the main developer kept the copyright and didn't assign a license which allowed it to be redistributed other then the server. Then when the developer decided she didn't want to work on the site anymore she wouldn't allow us to give it to other developers- which basically meant we had to start over from scratch. Good luck, Aaron -- Aaron Turner http://synfin.net/ http://tcpreplay.synfin.net/ - Pcap editing and replay tools for Unix & Windows They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
