Hi, On Thu, 2004-08-05 at 05:35 -0700, Jeff Waugh wrote: > <quote who="Danilo Šegan"> > > > Thanks, that pretty much clears it up. I, for one, would never want to > > assign copyright on anything I may (potentially) do on Mono or Evolution > > code to Novell if this is the case: when I write something as free > > software, I want it to *remain* free. > > Note that your changes, as released by Novell under the GPL, will *remain* > free. Novell may do non-free things with them, but your contributions to > Evolution - as released under the GPL - are still out there, under the GPL. > That Novell can do non-free things with your code, concerns many (of course). When the GPL is chosen as a licence for a project, the author or contributors want the code to be free, under all circumstances, which would not be the case. And as far as I can see, Novell is free to discontinue development on f.i. the free Evolution at any time, and continue to make this software under a proprietary licence. It depends how ideological you are - do you want to worry about this, or not? This isn't nescessarily wrong, but I see this as a two way thing - if that would happen, we're can fork the code, but we lose corporate support, which is bad. Novell is also in a situation where they might lose contributions because of their policies, but I guess that is a risk they're willing to take - after all, at least regarding Evolution, most contributions as I know have been trivial, and Ximian/Novell has developed most of the application. This is a symbiosis, so it's important that both parties have an understanding of what is going on. How many potential contributors that have turned around and walked away upon reading the agreement, will we never know. You might think of it otherwise; that if a company really wants the code to be free, they'd oblige themselves to keep it free, as well. That Novell has the opportunity to discontinue their support on Free Software does not concern me now, but the future, as we all know, is unseen and unclear. Of course, when the MIT X11/BSD licences are chosen, then the contributor already accepts the facts above. So it is only under the GPL (and similar licences) that this is an issue. Sorry for keeping a tedious discussion alive, but I've said what I need to say :-) Best wishes, Christoffer
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