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My understanding is that such relicensing rapidly becomes impossible once there are more than a very few significant contributors. Most proponents of Open Sour

My understanding is that such relicensing rapidly becomes impossible once there are more than a very few significant contributors. Most proponents of Open Source licenses would consider this a feature, not a bug. In any event, this is one of the reasons that maintainers of major projects (including GNU, IIRC) frequently require copyright assignment as a requirement for copyrightable contributions.

jlgaddis 6y ago
> Most proponents of Open Source licenses would consider this a feature, ... Indeed ... > ... maintainers of major projects (including GNU, IIRC) frequently require copyright assignment as a requirement for copyrightable contributions. ... and many folks, including myself, refuse to agree to any such agreements. Personally, I'd prefer BSD, MIT, or similar anyways but... if a project is GPL, one of the best ways to ensure that it remains GPL is for individual contributors to retain their copyright on any contributions. Take those paragons of open source, VMware [0] and the "open-vm-tools" [1] project, for example. For a variety of reasons, various components are under different licenses: > The code is being released under GPL v2 and GPL v2 compatible licenses. To be more specific, the Linux kernel modules are being released under the GPL v2, while almost all of the user level components are being released under the LGPL v2.1. The SVGA and mouse drivers have been available under the X11 license for quite some time. There are certain third party components released under BSD style licenses, to which VMware has in some cases contributed, and will continue to distribute with open-vm-tools. Okay, so it sounds like it's all open source and should remain that way so I shouldn't have any concerns about contributing bugfixes, enhancements, patches, etc., right? Wait for it... > Do I need to sign something before making a contribution? > Yes. We have a standard contribution agreement that covers all contributions made to the project. It gives VMware and you joint copyright interests in the code you are contributing. The agreement also gives VMware flexibility with licensing and also helps avoid any copyright/licensing related issues that may arise in the future. There it is. Nice choice of wording, by the way: it gives VMware "flexibility" with licensing and "helps avoid any copyright/licensing related issues". VMware certainly is fond of "flexibility with licensing"' as history has shown. -- Besides all of the other arguments, I think it's completely absurd that an individual should be required to enter into a one-sided legal agreement with a large corporation just to contribute some code -- even just two or three lines -- that they've already written and just want to give away. -- [0]: That's sarcasm, just to be clear! [1]: https://github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools https://github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools

jlgaddis 6y ago

> Most proponents of Open Source licenses would consider this a feature, ... Indeed ... > ... maintainers of major projects (including GNU, IIRC) frequently require copyright assignment as a requirement for copyrightable contributions. ... and many folks, including myself, refuse to agree to any such agreements. Personally, I'd prefer BSD, MIT, or similar anyways but... if a project is GPL, one of the best ways to ensure that it remains GPL is for individual contributors to retain their copyright on any contributions. Take those paragons of open source, VMware [0] and the "open-vm-tools" [1] project, for example. For a variety of reasons, various components are under different licenses: > The code is being released under GPL v2 and GPL v2 compatible licenses. To be more specific, the Linux kernel modules are being released under the GPL v2, while almost all of the user level components are being released under the LGPL v2.1. The SVGA and mouse drivers have been available under the X11 license for quite some time. There are certain third party components released under BSD style licenses, to which VMware has in some cases contributed, and will continue to distribute with open-vm-tools. Okay, so it sounds like it's all open source and should remain that way so I shouldn't have any concerns about contributing bugfixes, enhancements, patches, etc., right? Wait for it... > Do I need to sign something before making a contribution? > Yes. We have a standard contribution agreement that covers all contributions made to the project. It gives VMware and you joint copyright interests in the code you are contributing. The agreement also gives VMware flexibility with licensing and also helps avoid any copyright/licensing related issues that may arise in the future. There it is. Nice choice of wording, by the way: it gives VMware "flexibility" with licensing and "helps avoid any copyright/licensing related issues". VMware certainly is fond of "flexibility with licensing"' as history has shown. -- Besides all of the other arguments, I think it's completely absurd that an individual should be required to enter into a one-sided legal agreement with a large corporation just to contribute some code -- even just two or three lines -- that they've already written and just want to give away. -- [0]: That's sarcasm, just to be clear! [1]: https://github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools https://github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools