On 23/04/2017 17:32, Guy wrote:
You cannot be part of the open source community and then complain that
somebody borrows your code and then forks it. The JTDX project
publishes their source code and is doing nothing wrong IMHO.
If the WSJT-X team are getting hot under the collar about this, maybe
a much more restrictive licence would mollify them?
Hi Guy,
you are correct in principle but both the various JT65-HF version
developers and the JTDX developers have, in the past, failed to comply
with the terms of the GPL licences that Joe's software are released
with. What you see now is the result of Joe and the other developers in
his team requesting them to comply. Whether those omissions were due to
ignorance or by intent I do not know but it is clear that if we did not
enforce the GPL licence terms actively then they would not be compliant.
There is a significant difference between joining the Free Open Source
community willingly and leaching off other's work with minimum, or less,
compliance to the licence. It should not be necessary for original
authors to continually check and contact other teams who are using their
code to keep them in line with the licence terms.
As for being hot under the collar, absolutely not so long as those who
use Joe's Open Source code comply with the licence it is released under.
You imply that releasing the source code is all that is necessary. That
is not the case, any derivative work based on another author's GPL
licensed source code must itself be GPL licensed (or use a compatible
licence) and include a statement that it is a derivative work and
clearly show what is derived and what is original. As an exercise you
might like to try and find the licence that JTDX is released under, note
that saying it is GPL licensed is not sufficient, the licence terms and
conditions must be published. This may seem a small issue but what is to
stop someone else lifting the source code from the JTDX team and
including it into a proprietary product, claiming that it was not
protected by a licence?
73
Bill
G4WJS.
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