Replying here: I think Peter forked this thread :) 2009/10/20 Richard Gaskin <[email protected]>
> > Great stuff, David. More than just a grand vision, it appears well thought > out on many levels. > > One thing I don't understand with GPL'd code, though: > > What if rather than contributing, someone wanted to drive traffic to their > own site by forking the project and enhancing a new version of it? > > Are there any ways to ensure that a common pool doesn't get fragmented like > that? > Good stewardship. Good code. Listening and being open to change. Peter is right that you can;t force this structurally - you have to do the opposite and welcome the possibility of forking, just try to make sure your fork is the best :) Like many people I wouldn't join a project that was closed, that I couldn't get my data back out of it it were to go pear shaped or in a direction I did not like. > Also: Would a Rev stack need to use LGPL to maintain a clear distinction > from the engine, or is GPL sufficiently clear on that? > I looked a this and discussed it with a number of people / lawyers. Initially I assumed too that LGPL, was what was needed. I was told that GPL was a reasonable choice - despite much of the confusing talk - most of which relates to issues regarding low level languages and is not relevant to scripting languages. After further research I found that there are a number of communities that have taken this route, and it seems to have worked out fine for them. Adobe Flash is not open source. However you will find plenty of well respected ActionScript that explicitly license their code GPL. I see no reason why RevTalk cannot be licensed on the same basis as ActionScript, and the advice I have sought and research I have done has not contradicted that. In short there is no good reason I can find that we don't do a similar this to say a project like Open Source Flash<http://osflash.org/open_source_flash_projects>- I just think we can do it better. We gain stronger and better protection than simple licenses alone, by ensuring that the project is collectively owned and open to any developer that is interested in joining. Given that the copyright belongs to that collective organisation they are free to ammend and relicense the software under new licenses under whatever good council they get. However you can;t retract openness and the project can allways be forked if enough people don't like what we do. In short if there were to be a problem with a particular form of license, we have the added protection that the community can release a modified license in good faith. To the best of my knowledge the combination of both the licensing, the limited liability and open organisational structure, together with a clear and agreed social purpose as expresssed in the member agreement gives us the soundest basis for creating a thriving and sustainable open content community built around Revolution. We've got a strong community, but I think we can improve it, and learn from each other and other projects outside of our community. I hope that is entertaining enough Richmond? _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
