> Message: 10 > Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2011 15:40:58 +0000 > From: David Gerard <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] License exceptions in Wikimedia's repo (was > Re: SVN Extension Access) > To: Wikimedia developers <[email protected]> > Message-ID: > <caj0tu1eepsqjt41rryy9gnkcvj-bz-6oe-ougy3nt1xvtff...@mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > On 7 November 2011 15:08, Olivier Beaton <[email protected]> wrote: > > > To make it clear, copyright assignments (what I had in my original > > request) are common in the FOSS community, as you pointed out you > > talked about them yourself on your blog and wmf talked about having > > > Copyright assignments are inherently harmful, as their only use is so > that the assigned-to body can defect on the implicit covenant of open > source: that is, so it can take people's contributions private. > > The FSF continues to use them, on the theory that this gives greater > legal protection. While the FSF is quite unlikely to defect (it's > spent twenty-five years behaving as a consistent actor), its legal > theory appears unnecessary (neither the Linux kernel nor BusyBox use > copyright assignments, but both have been spectacularly successful in > pursuing GPL violations) and its continued use makes people think > they're a good idea. > > For an example of defection, see Oracle taking MySQL open-core. > > Copyright assignments are harmful. They are not some sort of standard > thing in open source. They would be harmful to MediaWiki. > > > - d.
You don't need to go for ideological reasons to go against copyright assignments to individual extension authors. It's simply impractical in the MW repo where many people make batch maintenance commits to expect all of those people to assign you their copyright (imho). My understanding is we allow people to commit extensions under whatever OSI approved license strikes their fancy, and that if you commit to someone else's extension, then you also release your commit under that license. This always struck me as common sense... -bawolff _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
