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Have you ever open sourced a large, complex, closed-source project of a similar scale, developed by one or two people? I built a project with a friend that was

Have you ever open sourced a large, complex, closed-source project of a similar scale, developed by one or two people? I built a project with a friend that was half the size of this one and less complex. At one point we had to decide whether to open source it or shut down the project entirely. The amount of work to get it to the point of open sourcing it so that anyone could meaningfully contribute to it (or even build it without a very specific setup) was daunting, and I simply didn't have the time or energy to go through with it. The fact that he's spent years getting it ready is a testament to his dedication to the community. Finally, you have no way of knowing what his contingency plan is. He may have passwords and instructions detailed to transfer control to someone else in the event of his death.

kragen 7y ago
No, I haven't, but that's irrelevant. The fact that your build setup was poorly documented provided you with no incentive to use the legal monopolies granted by copyright law against your users. I agree that it's important to go beyond the mere legal grant of rights to study, copy, modify, and redistribute software, for example by simplifying and documenting your build system. But not having done that, or not yet having done that, is no excuse for not having done the more basic step of simply granting them the legal rights that the law ought to grant them in the first place, but doesn't; nor for keeping secret the source code to the software your users were depending on, preventing them from modifying it even if they were capable of figuring out how to compile it. And it's true, I have no idea what his contingency plan is. But you are suggesting some kind of secret Rube-Goldberg-style legal setup as a substitute for the simple and straightforward publication of source and promulgation of a license like the Artistic License he plans to use. That would also be much safer, legally, since there's no room for heirs, debtors, or lawyers contesting a will, auctioning off the copyright to the software in order to pay debts or legal fees, etc. A much more likely case is that he simply doesn't have any plans for that situation because he isn't worried about it, and you've been reading too many silly novels.

kragen 7y ago

No, I haven't, but that's irrelevant. The fact that your build setup was poorly documented provided you with no incentive to use the legal monopolies granted by copyright law against your users. I agree that it's important to go beyond the mere legal grant of rights to study, copy, modify, and redistribute software, for example by simplifying and documenting your build system. But not having done that, or not yet having done that, is no excuse for not having done the more basic step of simply granting them the legal rights that the law ought to grant them in the first place, but doesn't; nor for keeping secret the source code to the software your users were depending on, preventing them from modifying it even if they were capable of figuring out how to compile it. And it's true, I have no idea what his contingency plan is. But you are suggesting some kind of secret Rube-Goldberg-style legal setup as a substitute for the simple and straightforward publication of source and promulgation of a license like the Artistic License he plans to use. That would also be much safer, legally, since there's no room for heirs, debtors, or lawyers contesting a will, auctioning off the copyright to the software in order to pay debts or legal fees, etc. A much more likely case is that he simply doesn't have any plans for that situation because he isn't worried about it, and you've been reading too many silly novels.