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Imagine if the open source community, rather than the specific developers of that repo, got to choose the license. Is that an improvement?
by hirundo 5y ago
Imagine if the open source community, rather than the specific developers of that repo, got to choose the license. Is that an improvement?
- jqpabc123 5y agoMost who use and contribute to Open Source have no choice with regard to license. That choice has already been made by "the community". And once made, these licenses often require the developer to assign copyright for their contribution to "the community". These "viral" licenses can also infect any subsequent project that tries to makes use of any code. The intent and effect here is pretty clear --- individual property rights are being re-assigned to "the community".
- hirundo 5y agoAs a contributor, do you wish to seize that choice from the founders/owners of the repo? If you could, wouldn't that make you somewhat less likely to start your own project, that you can reign over? If your right to vote on the license was a percentage of your contribution to the codebase, I'd expect that repo owners would be far less willing to merge outside pull requests.