Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
And how detrimental the license change exercise has been to the project and its community... -Original Message- From: discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Lester Caine Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2012 2:46 AM To: OSGeo Discussions Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license Markus Neteler wrote: A project can decide what makes the most sense for them. Note that for long-term projects a license change is rather difficult to realize (especially if older contributors are no longer traceable..). Just check out how long it's taking on openstreetmap ... -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
On 07/27/2012 10:27 AM, Seven (aka Arnulf) wrote: On 07/27/2012 11:45 AM, Mateusz Loskot wrote: On 27 July 2012 05:55, Alex Mandel tech_...@wildintellect.com wrote: This is a really interesting debate. Reading the links provided it also appears to be a mixed bag about acceptance of LGPL of various firms and I'm also sure many of us can name firms that have no issue shipping LGPL components. GPL is dying, of natural causes. http://ostatic.com/blog/the-top-licenses-on-github Best regards, Another interesting effect is the growing interest of other organizations in geospatial software, currently mainly on the library side of things. Current example is GeoTools and GeoToolKit and Eclipse and Apache respectively. It seems that this is a natural result of the commoditization of geospatial functions and features and their dissemination into standard IT. In coming years we will see less and less distinguishable and openly competing geospatial projects but more and more geospatial tools become a regular part of software distributions. We have already seen this happen in a way with GDAL/OGR which is being used all over the place. Just like Oracle has a WMS viewer built in installing PostgreSQL already has PostGIS - and may eventually also ship with MapServer and FeatureServer (or whatever makes the race) and there is no more need for a separate installation / configuration. Not sure where this leads us and this is just off the top of my head, but might be interesting to have a conversation about anyway. Cheers, Arnulf Arnulf, I think you may be right about geospatial software moving into main stream IT. Frankly when you see big software companies like Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Oracle, and others in the space then it's a good hint the shift is well under way. The other powerful trend is pragmatic embracing of open source on the part of companies. When companies like Microsoft, ESRI, and others - long known for strong proprietary views - are working hard to embrace open source then it's clear something significant is taking place. As companies want a closer relationship with open source projects and vice versa, LocationTech http://wiki.eclipse.org/LocationTech is a strong option given Eclipse's governance + history the people involved. Related, for those that haven't caught it already, see this article: http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/07/open-source-won.html Andrew ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
Markus Neteler wrote: A project can decide what makes the most sense for them. Note that for long-term projects a license change is rather difficult to realize (especially if older contributors are no longer traceable..). Just check out how long it's taking on openstreetmap ... -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 28.07.2012 05:44, Andrew Ross wrote: On 27 July 2012 18:43, Markus Neteler nete...@osgeo.org mailto:nete...@osgeo.org wrote: On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 3:08 PM, Andrew Ross andrew.r...@eclipse.org mailto:andrew.r...@eclipse.org wrote: ... A project can decide what makes the most sense for them. Note that for long-term projects a license change is rather difficult to realize (especially if older contributors are no longer traceable..). Markus Markus, Agreed. This is one of many reasons why this discussion is so important, even if we'd rather be drinking beer. ;-) If you think you might ever consider re-licensing your project, then it's not a bad idea to consider contribution agreements. They can make the process to re-license, should you ever decide to, a lot less pain effort. I hope that it isn't lost in the discussion that it really isn't about a given license winning or dying even if that's interesting to data junkies like us. It's about the project's goals, and hopefully reducing friction towards achieving them. Andrew This is why OSGeo offers projects to transfer copyright of all their software to OSGeo as an organization. In that case it is easy to keep licensing up to date. From that point onwards it simply requires sticking to the coding rules and adding the appropriate header to any new code. Done. Some OSGeo projects chose to do that, some not. But in OSGeo there is no obligation to do this and it is up to the current copyright holders and contributors what they prefer. Cheers, Arnulf. - -- Exploring Space, Time and Mind http://arnulf.us -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAlAUFFsACgkQXmFKW+BJ1b1iMgCdFBsD7CUdArt1ODdW48yGN7tX 19IAnR8QpdU46S4iUS5v5Teoq7CVQn29 =YIDY -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
On 27 July 2012 05:55, Alex Mandel tech_...@wildintellect.com wrote: This is a really interesting debate. Reading the links provided it also appears to be a mixed bag about acceptance of LGPL of various firms and I'm also sure many of us can name firms that have no issue shipping LGPL components. GPL is dying, of natural causes. http://ostatic.com/blog/the-top-licenses-on-github Best regards, -- Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
Il 27/07/2012 12:45, Mateusz Loskot ha scritto: GPL is dying, of natural causes. http://ostatic.com/blog/the-top-licenses-on-github Best regards, is this true only on GH, or is it a general phenomenon? -- Paolo Cavallini - Faunalia www.faunalia.eu Full contact details at www.faunalia.eu/pc Nuovi corsi QGIS e PostGIS: http://www.faunalia.it/calendario ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
Il 27/07/2012 12:45, Mateusz Loskot ha scritto: GPL is dying, of natural causes. http://ostatic.com/blog/the-top-licenses-on-github Best regards, is this true only on GH, or is it a general phenomenon? Well, if you do a quick search for GPL on github, https://github.com/search?q=GPLrepo=langOverride=start_value=1type=Everythinglanguage= , you have about 1572 repositories that match. Searching for MIT or GPL dual license ,https://github.com/search?q=MIT+or+GPLrepo=langOverride=start_value=1type=Everythinglanguage=, turns up 3475 repositories. It's interesting that the most active projects on github are not GPL, but I don't think that signals the death of the GPL license. Doug Doug Newcomb USFWS Raleigh, NC 919-856-4520 ext. 14 doug_newc...@fws.gov - The opinions I express are my own and are not representative of the official policy of the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service or Dept. of the Interior. Life is too short for undocumented, proprietary data formats.___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
On 27 July 2012 11:47, Markus Neteler nete...@osgeo.org wrote: On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 12:45 PM, Mateusz Loskot mate...@loskot.net wrote: On 27 July 2012 05:55, Alex Mandel tech_...@wildintellect.com wrote: This is a really interesting debate. Reading the links provided it also appears to be a mixed bag about acceptance of LGPL of various firms and I'm also sure many of us can name firms that have no issue shipping LGPL components. GPL is dying, of natural causes. http://ostatic.com/blog/the-top-licenses-on-github Perhaps but do you think that github is representative? I don't think a representative analysis is even possible in case of software licensing preferences. Unlike SourceForge, GitHub is a young platform and it's gaining popularity among FOSS hackers rapidly. So, guided by simple assumption it is very likely that a developer will choose GitHub for his new FOSS project, I'm quite convinced these statistics show the current trend, the trend of newly established FOSS projects regarding licensing preferences. Certainly, you can't ignore sample of 2 million public repositories*** and 1 million users at GitHub. *** It does not mean there are 2m distinct projects, of course. Best regards, -- Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
On 07/27/2012 12:55 AM, Alex Mandel wrote: 3.You can also re-license the finished product under a commercial license of your choice this seems to be the biggest difference with LGPL. But there's also another big difference, and EPL program is incompatible with all other OS licenses http://www.eclipse.org/legal/eplfaq.php#USEINANOTHER So it's more restrictive than BSD, MIT, Apache, etc... Alex, [snipped to break out this particular thought] This is best illustrated with a use case. GeoServer uses EPL code hosted at Eclipse today. GeoServer is licensed under the GPL. GPL is incompatible with the EPL since both clauses cannot be true at the same time. This was addressed by GeoServer issuing a GPL exception for the EPL software it consumed. So the choice whether GeoServer wanted to consume EPL code was theirs. You're right though... BSD, MIT, Apache wouldn't have this issue - at the expense of not having the weak copyleft. Basically people can take the code and do what they wish with it. A project can decide what makes the most sense for them. I'm guessing that projects that chose LGPL (or GPL for that matter) did so in part because of the copyleft. Andrew ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
On Jul 27, 2012, at 9:08 AM, Andrew Ross andrew.r...@eclipse.org wrote: BSD, MIT, Apache wouldn't have this issue - at the expense of not having the weak copyleft. Basically people can take the code and do what they wish with it. +1 -- Puneet Kishor ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
FYI: I release all of the code for my projects under the GPL and LGPL, and have no plans on switching for my projects. So the licenses aren't dead quite yet. :] I think there is a tradeoff in the licensing decision between the greater adoption that comes with a weaker license, and the stricter adherence to open source principles that come with a stronger license. (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html) I'm not making a statement about which license is better for OSGeo Projects, I'm just making a general statement. I personally feel the principles in the GPL and LGPL are more important than wider adoption for my projects. But I'm just a hobby programmer. There is one more thing to think about before changing the license on a project. There may be programmers that favor contributions to projects licensed under the GPL/LGPL, and consider a project's license when determining where to dedicate their resources. I know OSGeo has the right to change the licensing, but I believe there should be a very strong case for doing so. It is, to a certain extent, changing the rules after the game has started. Landon On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 6:22 AM, Mr. Puneet Kishor punk.k...@gmail.com wrote: On Jul 27, 2012, at 9:08 AM, Andrew Ross andrew.r...@eclipse.org wrote: BSD, MIT, Apache wouldn't have this issue - at the expense of not having the weak copyleft. Basically people can take the code and do what they wish with it. +1 -- Puneet Kishor ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
On 07/27/2012 11:45 AM, Mateusz Loskot wrote: On 27 July 2012 05:55, Alex Mandel tech_...@wildintellect.com wrote: This is a really interesting debate. Reading the links provided it also appears to be a mixed bag about acceptance of LGPL of various firms and I'm also sure many of us can name firms that have no issue shipping LGPL components. GPL is dying, of natural causes. http://ostatic.com/blog/the-top-licenses-on-github Best regards, (I don't think that GPL is dying, it is still 70% on SourceForge last time I checked) The more interesting question is - what are the natural causes? To me it seems that Open Source is just not being so much under pressure from a FUD POV, it is wide and largely accepted making it much less prone to being appropriated. Therefore maybe the whole concept of Copyleft is just not that important any more? Another interesting effect is the growing interest of other organizations in geospatial software, currently mainly on the library side of things. Current example is GeoTools and GeoToolKit and Eclipse and Apache respectively. It seems that this is a natural result of the commoditization of geospatial functions and features and their dissemination into standard IT. In coming years we will see less and less distinguishable and openly competing geospatial projects but more and more geospatial tools become a regular part of software distributions. We have already seen this happen in a way with GDAL/OGR which is being used all over the place. Just like Oracle has a WMS viewer built in installing PostgreSQL already has PostGIS - and may eventually also ship with MapServer and FeatureServer (or whatever makes the race) and there is no more need for a separate installation / configuration. Not sure where this leads us and this is just off the top of my head, but might be interesting to have a conversation about anyway. Cheers, Arnulf -- Exploring Space, Time and Mind http://arnulf.us ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
Nobody has expressed interest in GeoTools and we are very happy where we are with LGPL as a biz friendly license. uDig is attempting an out reach to the Eclipse foundation, both as a source of developer trained up in the Eclipse RCP framework which use as our plugin system, and as we are comfortable with our connections to the OSGeo community (by virtue of GeoTools involvement, LiveDVD etc...) Not sure what is up with Apache, anyone know? -- Jody Garnett On 28/07/2012, at 12:28 AM, Seven (aka Arnulf) se...@arnulf.us wrote: On 07/27/2012 11:45 AM, Mateusz Loskot wrote: On 27 July 2012 05:55, Alex Mandel tech_...@wildintellect.com wrote: This is a really interesting debate. Reading the links provided it also appears to be a mixed bag about acceptance of LGPL of various firms and I'm also sure many of us can name firms that have no issue shipping LGPL components. GPL is dying, of natural causes. http://ostatic.com/blog/the-top-licenses-on-github Best regards, (I don't think that GPL is dying, it is still 70% on SourceForge last time I checked) The more interesting question is - what are the natural causes? To me it seems that Open Source is just not being so much under pressure from a FUD POV, it is wide and largely accepted making it much less prone to being appropriated. Therefore maybe the whole concept of Copyleft is just not that important any more? Another interesting effect is the growing interest of other organizations in geospatial software, currently mainly on the library side of things. Current example is GeoTools and GeoToolKit and Eclipse and Apache respectively. It seems that this is a natural result of the commoditization of geospatial functions and features and their dissemination into standard IT. In coming years we will see less and less distinguishable and openly competing geospatial projects but more and more geospatial tools become a regular part of software distributions. We have already seen this happen in a way with GDAL/OGR which is being used all over the place. Just like Oracle has a WMS viewer built in installing PostgreSQL already has PostGIS - and may eventually also ship with MapServer and FeatureServer (or whatever makes the race) and there is no more need for a separate installation / configuration. Not sure where this leads us and this is just off the top of my head, but might be interesting to have a conversation about anyway. Cheers, Arnulf -- Exploring Space, Time and Mind http://arnulf.us ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
On Jul 27, 2012, at 10:27 AM, Seven (aka Arnulf) se...@arnulf.us wrote: On 07/27/2012 11:45 AM, Mateusz Loskot wrote: On 27 July 2012 05:55, Alex Mandel tech_...@wildintellect.com wrote: This is a really interesting debate. Reading the links provided it also appears to be a mixed bag about acceptance of LGPL of various firms and I'm also sure many of us can name firms that have no issue shipping LGPL components. GPL is dying, of natural causes. http://ostatic.com/blog/the-top-licenses-on-github Best regards, (I don't think that GPL is dying, it is still 70% on SourceForge last time I checked) .. would also be interesting to rearrange that chart by -- - SLOC. Would 200 projects of 5 SLOC each under license A vs. one project of 1000 SLOC under license B considered some kind of marker? - adoption. Would 200 projects under license A adopted by a total of 500 implementations vs. one project under license B adopted by 500,000 folks portend some other kind of trend? Yes, an interesting and worthwhile conversation. -- Puneet Kishor ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
On Jul 27, 2012, at 10:05 AM, Landon Blake sunburned.surve...@gmail.com wrote: I think there is a tradeoff in the licensing decision between the greater adoption that comes with a weaker license, and the stricter adherence to open source principles that come with a stronger license. (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html) I'm not making a statement about which license is better for OSGeo Projects, I'm just making a general statement. I personally feel the principles in the GPL and LGPL are more important than wider adoption for my projects. But I'm just a hobby programmer. Yes, choice of license is a personal one, and while we may disagree on it, we have to abide by the choices that others make. Personally, I care enough about free and open access that I want to see as wide adoption as possible. And, that includes those who may want to take my work, modify it, and re-release the modifications under a more restrictive license. If that leads to wider adoption, and there is some empirical evidence it does, I am all for it. Which is why I tend to use CC0 -- that is, effectively in the Public Domain, reverted to CC-BY where PD is not possible or impractical. -- Puneet Kishor ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
On 27 July 2012 15:50, Mr. Puneet Kishor punk.k...@gmail.com wrote: On Jul 27, 2012, at 10:05 AM, Landon Blake sunburned.surve...@gmail.com wrote: I think there is a tradeoff in the licensing decision between the greater adoption that comes with a weaker license, and the stricter adherence to open source principles that come with a stronger license. (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html) I'm not making a statement about which license is better for OSGeo Projects, I'm just making a general statement. I personally feel the principles in the GPL and LGPL are more important than wider adoption for my projects. But I'm just a hobby programmer. Yes, choice of license is a personal one, and while we may disagree on it, we have to abide by the choices that others make. Actually choice of licence may be imposed on you by employer or sponsoring organisation - for example the deal at Leeds University (where GeoTools grew up) was that we were supposed to sell the code for as much as possible or we could give it away under the GPL (and later the LGPL). If the University couldn't make money then no one could. Added to confusion was the funding bodies determination that they also owned everything and giving the code away was the easiest option. The only thing I hate more than licence discussions is meetings with the lawyers. Ian -- Ian Turton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
On Jul 27, 2012, at 11:59 AM, Ian Turton ijtur...@gmail.com wrote: On 27 July 2012 15:50, Mr. Puneet Kishor punk.k...@gmail.com wrote: On Jul 27, 2012, at 10:05 AM, Landon Blake sunburned.surve...@gmail.com wrote: I think there is a tradeoff in the licensing decision between the greater adoption that comes with a weaker license, and the stricter adherence to open source principles that come with a stronger license. (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html) I'm not making a statement about which license is better for OSGeo Projects, I'm just making a general statement. I personally feel the principles in the GPL and LGPL are more important than wider adoption for my projects. But I'm just a hobby programmer. Yes, choice of license is a personal one, and while we may disagree on it, we have to abide by the choices that others make. Actually choice of licence may be imposed on you by employer or sponsoring organisation - Yes, of course. I wasn't bringing into discussion situations where I had no control. If my terms of hire or funding state something, I have to abide by that, and all this discussion is moot. ... The only thing I hate more than licence discussions is meetings with the lawyers. Indeed. Which is why I short-circuit all license discussions in my personal domain by not having any license. Life is too short and precious, in my view, to encumber with these complications. I'd rather be having a cold beer. -- Puneet Kishor ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
I hesitate to get into this discussion, but... Puneet wrote: [...] I short-circuit all license discussions in my personal domain by not having any license. Life is too short and precious, in my view, to encumber with these complications. Do you literally mean no license at all? That might be a mistake, if you're looking for others to adopt your code. Having no license documentation in the code raises all sorts of red flags. In my commercial or government work, I'd not allow use of any code whose provenance, author, and/or copyright status is at all unclear. -mpg ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
On 27 July 2012 15:27, Seven (aka Arnulf) se...@arnulf.us wrote: On 07/27/2012 11:45 AM, Mateusz Loskot wrote: On 27 July 2012 05:55, Alex Mandel tech_...@wildintellect.com wrote: This is a really interesting debate. Reading the links provided it also appears to be a mixed bag about acceptance of LGPL of various firms and I'm also sure many of us can name firms that have no issue shipping LGPL components. GPL is dying, of natural causes. http://ostatic.com/blog/the-top-licenses-on-github Best regards, (I don't think that GPL is dying, it is still 70% on SourceForge last time I checked) As I mentioned, SF.net hosts tons of old, obsolete and inactive projects. The more interesting question is - what are the natural causes? IMO: BSD, MIT, Boost...licenses are freer and this freedom is apparently important for new projects and initiative, especially if the future is unclear. Another important aspect is the simplicity: if I'm not a lawyer, and I don't care about hiring one, but I'm not sure about the terms (and future of my project), I go for simplest reasonable. Finally, I do dare statement, that nowadays most of FOSS code is written on request by companies or individual investors who pay hard cash for most of lines of code written in FOSS projects. The clientelle seems to prefer the freer freedom too. Best regards, -- Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
On Jul 27, 2012, at 2:00 PM, Michael P. Gerlek m...@flaxen.com wrote: I hesitate to get into this discussion, but... Puneet wrote: [...] I short-circuit all license discussions in my personal domain by not having any license. Life is too short and precious, in my view, to encumber with these complications. Do you literally mean no license at all? That might be a mistake, if you're looking for others to adopt your code. No, I don't mean no license at all. I mean CC0. http://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/ Having no license documentation in the code raises all sorts of red flags. In my commercial or government work, I'd not allow use of any code whose provenance, author, and/or copyright status is at all unclear. Using CC0 makes my intent very clear. -- Puneet Kishor ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
I would have to echo that. I do not see using code at work that does not have any licensing information attached. Doug Doug Newcomb USFWS Raleigh, NC 919-856-4520 ext. 14 doug_newc...@fws.gov - The opinions I express are my own and are not representative of the official policy of the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service or Dept. of the Interior. Life is too short for undocumented, proprietary data formats. Michael P. Gerlek m...@flaxen.com Sent by: discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org 07/27/2012 02:01 PM Please respond to m...@flaxen.com To 'Mr. Puneet Kishor' punk.k...@gmail.com, discuss@lists.osgeo.org cc Subject Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license I hesitate to get into this discussion, but... Puneet wrote: [...] I short-circuit all license discussions in my personal domain by not having any license. Life is too short and precious, in my view, to encumber with these complications. Do you literally mean no license at all? That might be a mistake, if you're looking for others to adopt your code. Having no license documentation in the code raises all sorts of red flags. In my commercial or government work, I'd not allow use of any code whose provenance, author, and/or copyright status is at all unclear. -mpg ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
On Jul 27, 2012, at 2:39 PM, doug_newc...@fws.gov wrote: I would have to echo that. I do not see using code at work that does not have any licensing information attached. Agreed. -- Puneet Kishor ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
Landon, For what it's worth... I eagerly read that link you provided. It represents one end of the spectrum for values and principles in terms of open source. I believe it's fair to say that end of the spectrum is fairly staunch and recognized by some as radical and even marginalizing. I believe there's plenty of room in the world for people who believe strongly in such messages, but I do feel personally this type of dogma seems a bit out of date and probably no longer as necessary. The opportunity is for projects companies partner and work together in harmony. For projects that are interested, there's help available. For those that don't want it, that's OK too. Andrew On 07/27/2012 10:05 AM, Landon Blake wrote: FYI: I release all of the code for my projects under the GPL and LGPL, and have no plans on switching for my projects. So the licenses aren't dead quite yet. :] I think there is a tradeoff in the licensing decision between the greater adoption that comes with a weaker license, and the stricter adherence to open source principles that come with a stronger license. (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html) I'm not making a statement about which license is better for OSGeo Projects, I'm just making a general statement. I personally feel the principles in the GPL and LGPL are more important than wider adoption for my projects. But I'm just a hobby programmer. There is one more thing to think about before changing the license on a project. There may be programmers that favor contributions to projects licensed under the GPL/LGPL, and consider a project's license when determining where to dedicate their resources. I know OSGeo has the right to change the licensing, but I believe there should be a very strong case for doing so. It is, to a certain extent, changing the rules after the game has started. Landon On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 6:22 AM, Mr. Puneet Kishor punk.k...@gmail.com wrote: On Jul 27, 2012, at 9:08 AM, Andrew Ross andrew.r...@eclipse.org wrote: BSD, MIT, Apache wouldn't have this issue - at the expense of not having the weak copyleft. Basically people can take the code and do what they wish with it. +1 -- Puneet Kishor ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
As someone who has done several for-pay projects (both big and small) to combine proprietary and foss4g code, I can give a summary from a set of anecdotal evidence and trends that I have noticed from a US-based consultant point of view. From my experience, the adoption of an open source project obviously depends a lot on the license and the *environment* it is going to be deployed on. Let me explain. When offering a solution to a customer, it is easy to convince them that changes/enhancements to a particular component they are getting for free should be released out back to the community. It takes 1 minute to convince them of this. No friction there. What is much more difficult is to convince them that *all* the code they have been building for sometime now, needs to also be released under the same terms (think GPLv3). *That*, I can certainly say that 99.99% of the time they feel really strongly against! When consuming full-blown GPL-licensed code, the situation when somebody has to also license their entire code base under the GPL depends on the environment. Let me take the example of LGPL and full blown GPL (forget about Affero GPLv3 for this discussion). For server-side and desktop technologies, take the example where the processes are running separate. Changing GPL code is effectively enhancing that component I got for free, which they understand (they may not understand in-proc or out-of-proc). From a practical stand-point, the restrictions/obligations are similar to that of LGPL because the client's code is separate from open source project's code, so adopting an open source project under GPL or LGPL is of low friction. For components that are running in-proc, then the license matters much more. An LGPL licensed project still gives them the concept of I just need to release the fixes that I make to the library I got for free, so it is an easy-sell. GPL-licensed code goes beyond this, so every single customer I've had where I offered to consume GPL-code in-proc said 'no' (except for one in academia, but that was a special case). For customers where I have built iOS apps for, it gets really really tricky. iOS does not allow shared linking of code (it is all static linking), in that scenario, LGPL becomes the new GPL. Some people argue that you can http://stackoverflow.com/questions/459833/which-open-source-licenses-are-compatible-with-the-iphone-and-app-store use a special provision of LGPL to be able to use LGPL-licensed code in the Apple App Store. But there is no legal precedent for that yet (and thus, as of right now, it is a theoretical argument), so most businesses that respect licenses (or don't want to run the risk) will stay away from it altogether. For web development development, it is a different story and a much longer discussion because of the various ways you can consume open source projects. Now for MIT, Apache, and similar licenses, you don't have any of these implications. It is much easier to convince somebody to consume a project of this kind. Afterwards, you can always give arguments for why it is beneficial to open source a generic component and, so far, I have never encountered friction against this. The FileGDB and ArcObjects GDAL drivers are examples of this. As far as GitHub vs Sourceforge, I think it is hard to argue that any new open source is far more likely to adopt GitHub vs any other repo kind out there. The reasoning, besides the technological implications, are IMHO, rooted in generational-gap arguments. My two-cents, - Ragi -- View this message in context: http://osgeo-org.1560.n6.nabble.com/The-importance-of-a-project-s-license-tp4991223p4991456.html Sent from the OSGeo Discuss mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
On 27 July 2012 18:43, Markus Neteler nete...@osgeo.org wrote: On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 3:08 PM, Andrew Ross andrew.r...@eclipse.org wrote: ... A project can decide what makes the most sense for them. Note that for long-term projects a license change is rather difficult to realize (especially if older contributors are no longer traceable..). Markus Markus, Agreed. This is one of many reasons why this discussion is so important, even if we'd rather be drinking beer. ;-) If you think you might ever consider re-licensing your project, then it's not a bad idea to consider contribution agreements. They can make the process to re-license, should you ever decide to, a lot less pain effort. I hope that it isn't lost in the discussion that it really isn't about a given license winning or dying even if that's interesting to data junkies like us. It's about the project's goals, and hopefully reducing friction towards achieving them. Andrew ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
Ragi, Thank you very much for sharing your experience. You've saved me a lot of time -- Mateusz Loskot (Sent from phone, apology for any top-posting or broken quoting) On 27 Jul 2012 21:11, rburhum r...@burhum.com wrote: As someone who has done several for-pay projects (both big and small) to combine proprietary and foss4g code, I can give a summary from a set of anecdotal evidence and trends that I have noticed from a US-based consultant point of view. From my experience, the adoption of an open source project obviously depends a lot on the license and the *environment* it is going to be deployed on. Let me explain. When offering a solution to a customer, it is easy to convince them that changes/enhancements to a particular component they are getting for free should be released out back to the community. It takes 1 minute to convince them of this. No friction there. What is much more difficult is to convince them that *all* the code they have been building for sometime now, needs to also be released under the same terms (think GPLv3). *That*, I can certainly say that 99.99% of the time they feel really strongly against! When consuming full-blown GPL-licensed code, the situation when somebody has to also license their entire code base under the GPL depends on the environment. Let me take the example of LGPL and full blown GPL (forget about Affero GPLv3 for this discussion). For server-side and desktop technologies, take the example where the processes are running separate. Changing GPL code is effectively enhancing that component I got for free, which they understand (they may not understand in-proc or out-of-proc). From a practical stand-point, the restrictions/obligations are similar to that of LGPL because the client's code is separate from open source project's code, so adopting an open source project under GPL or LGPL is of low friction. For components that are running in-proc, then the license matters much more. An LGPL licensed project still gives them the concept of I just need to release the fixes that I make to the library I got for free, so it is an easy-sell. GPL-licensed code goes beyond this, so every single customer I've had where I offered to consume GPL-code in-proc said 'no' (except for one in academia, but that was a special case). For customers where I have built iOS apps for, it gets really really tricky. iOS does not allow shared linking of code (it is all static linking), in that scenario, LGPL becomes the new GPL. Some people argue that you can http://stackoverflow.com/questions/459833/which-open-source-licenses-are-compatible-with-the-iphone-and-app-store use a special provision of LGPL to be able to use LGPL-licensed code in the Apple App Store. But there is no legal precedent for that yet (and thus, as of right now, it is a theoretical argument), so most businesses that respect licenses (or don't want to run the risk) will stay away from it altogether. For web development development, it is a different story and a much longer discussion because of the various ways you can consume open source projects. Now for MIT, Apache, and similar licenses, you don't have any of these implications. It is much easier to convince somebody to consume a project of this kind. Afterwards, you can always give arguments for why it is beneficial to open source a generic component and, so far, I have never encountered friction against this. The FileGDB and ArcObjects GDAL drivers are examples of this. As far as GitHub vs Sourceforge, I think it is hard to argue that any new open source is far more likely to adopt GitHub vs any other repo kind out there. The reasoning, besides the technological implications, are IMHO, rooted in generational-gap arguments. My two-cents, - Ragi -- View this message in context: http://osgeo-org.1560.n6.nabble.com/The-importance-of-a-project-s-license-tp4991223p4991456.html Sent from the OSGeo Discuss mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license
This is a really interesting debate. Reading the links provided it also appears to be a mixed bag about acceptance of LGPL of various firms and I'm also sure many of us can name firms that have no issue shipping LGPL components. Aside from that though, reading about the Apache SIS project motivation and better understanding of why Geotools forked to begin with seem quite relevant. The first was easy to find, but does anyone have a good history of geotools v geotoolkit? 3.You can also re-license the finished product under a commercial license of your choice this seems to be the biggest difference with LGPL. But there's also another big difference, and EPL program is incompatible with all other OS licenses http://www.eclipse.org/legal/eplfaq.php#USEINANOTHER So it's more restrictive than BSD, MIT, Apache, etc... For me that says, if there was a re-license (which I'm not sure I understand the need for or agree with) I would say Apache might be a better choice than EPL. So that it's possible for edits under that to be reused in an LGPL project later. From the Board perspective, is there precedence for what's a good reason to relicense vs not? Perhaps a list of questions to test with? Thanks, Alex On 07/26/2012 07:44 PM, Andrew Ross wrote: Cameron, Everyone [was: Re: Asking permission for re-licensing from LGPL to Apache on the OSGeo board list] I am not a lawyer of course. I do work with some really good ones. Like each of you, I do listen, learn, and try to pick up what I can to educate myself. Stating it plainly, there are noteworthy firms that have sufficient concerns about LGPL that they will strive to avoid it. These are respected firms such as Nokia http://bill.burkecentral.com/2010/05/19/apache-damaging-to-open-source/, Lockheed Martin http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/openlayers-dev/2012-March/008552.html, IBM http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/www-legal-discuss/200508.mbox/%3cofa81bc35a.1032fa31-on04257059.00629855-04257059.00645...@us.ibm.com%3E, Oracle http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/08/oracle_bea_gpl_lgpl_code_check/, and many others. It's about friction. The IBM link above is a good one to review and consider in this regard. The Eclipse Foundation, and by extension the LocationTech http://wiki.eclipse.org/LocationTech working group are designed carefully to minimize such friction while simultaneously balancing benefits to projects. These policies seem to be reasonably effective based on the success of Eclipse software. The Eclipse Public License is a central part of reducing friction while maintaining balance for the project's well being and interests. It is a weak copyleft license. In short: 1. If you modify EPL code and redistribute, you are obligated to share the changes. 2. If you build on top of EPL software, your own software can be licensed under your own license of choice (assuming no license conflicts) 3. You can also re-license the finished product under a commercial license of your choice LocationTech also allows other business friendly licenses like MIT, BSD, and Apache. In our license choices, IP policy, and other processes we're trying to ensure things don't needlessly hinder projects from being adopted by anyone and especially those people who might help you make a living from it. Andrew On 07/26/2012 06:48 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote: Andrew Ross, I think it would be very valuable for you to expand the forum of your discussion about OSGeo/LocationTech, licences, and all things come under that banner. In particular, I think it should be discussed on osgeo-discuss. One of the first questions that I think needs to be debated is Why Eclipse believes in the license it supports (and in particular, why there are concerns with LGPL) I think there are many developers (such as myself) who would question their previous choice of LGPL, based upon further legal advice you have mentioned to me. Andrew, you may wish to CC the osgeo discuss list in your reply to this email. On 27/07/2012 8:10 AM, Martin Desruisseaux wrote: Board As suggested, we posted our request on the GeoTools mailing list (http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=29572383). The GeoTools PMC had a meeting Monday, which resulted in 2 inclined yes votes, 2 inclined no votes and one proposal to re-license GeoTools too. We do not know yet the final GeoTools PMC decision, neither we saw any reply to our request from the OSGeo board. Consequently I would like to recall a few points, and make one proposal (note: my willing is not to create contentious, but to insist on open source spirit in a context where two projects are facing strategic steps): 1. We granted copyright to OSGeo, not to GeoTools. 2. When we granted copyright, we understood that OSGeo would have the duty to behave according its charter, which is not to protect the economical interests of some members or to favour one
