2 ms·

> but we no longer have a CLA so relicensing or dual licensing is off the table. Why is it off the table? Email your contributors and ask if anyone objects. If

> but we no longer have a CLA so relicensing or dual licensing is off the table. Why is it off the table? Email your contributors and ask if anyone objects. If they object or don't reply, you can probably rewrite the code they contributed, or argue it's too small/trivial to justify a copyright claim. To be blunt, it's extremely unlikely someone is going to sue or even raise a stink over a small contribution. It's more work than if you had a CLA, yeah, but it's not off the table. > On a related note, this is why proliferation of FLOSS licenses is bad. Use MIT, BSD, GPL3, or LGPL and call it a day. 100% agree.

noname120 3y ago
VLC did a relicense a few years ago and it required them to contact 300+ contributors (!) and even stalk a few of them IRL in order to get in touch with them. Nobody wants to go through this pain… Part 1: https://jbkempf.com/blog/how-to-properly-relicense-a-large-open-source-project/ https://jbkempf.com/blog/how-to-properly-relicense-a-large-o... Part 2: https://jbkempf.com/blog/how-to-properly-relicense-a-large-open-source-project-part-2/ https://jbkempf.com/blog/how-to-properly-relicense-a-large-o... Part 3: https://jbkempf.com/blog/how-to-properly-relicense-a-large-open-source-project-part-3/ https://jbkempf.com/blog/how-to-properly-relicense-a-large-o...
- coldpie 3y ago
  In my opinion, they went way above what was required. A lot of that pain was self-inflicted. In all of that work, they didn't have a single person object to the license change. I feel confident saying that there are zero people who meet all of these requirements to cause a real problem: 1) contributed enough code to genuinely have a copyright claim, 2) are still alive, 3) are not easily contactable, and 4) care enough about their contribution to file a legal claim over it. IMO they could have stopped after the emails and a quick look through the remaining unaccounted-for code for any genuinely significant contributions. They didn't need to go hunt down one guy who changed two characters in a comment ("Quite a few people were surprised that I would mail them ('I only wrote one small commit', 'This was minor code').").
phkahler 3y ago
>> Why is it off the table? Oh it's not really. If either FreeCAD or Blender devs asked for a drop of the solver under their license I'd take a look to see who we'd need permission from and make some effort. It can't be more than 10 people. Since we switched to Eigen for the matrix stuff, there would also be a decision on whether to use it prior to that change. It was completely stand alone until then. Solvespace as a whole will remain GPLv3 though.

noname120 3y ago

VLC did a relicense a few years ago and it required them to contact 300+ contributors (!) and even stalk a few of them IRL in order to get in touch with them. Nobody wants to go through this pain… Part 1: https://jbkempf.com/blog/how-to-properly-relicense-a-large-open-source-project/ https://jbkempf.com/blog/how-to-properly-relicense-a-large-o... Part 2: https://jbkempf.com/blog/how-to-properly-relicense-a-large-open-source-project-part-2/ https://jbkempf.com/blog/how-to-properly-relicense-a-large-o... Part 3: https://jbkempf.com/blog/how-to-properly-relicense-a-large-open-source-project-part-3/ https://jbkempf.com/blog/how-to-properly-relicense-a-large-o...

coldpie 3y ago
In my opinion, they went way above what was required. A lot of that pain was self-inflicted. In all of that work, they didn't have a single person object to the license change. I feel confident saying that there are zero people who meet all of these requirements to cause a real problem: 1) contributed enough code to genuinely have a copyright claim, 2) are still alive, 3) are not easily contactable, and 4) care enough about their contribution to file a legal claim over it. IMO they could have stopped after the emails and a quick look through the remaining unaccounted-for code for any genuinely significant contributions. They didn't need to go hunt down one guy who changed two characters in a comment ("Quite a few people were surprised that I would mail them ('I only wrote one small commit', 'This was minor code').").

phkahler 3y ago

>> Why is it off the table? Oh it's not really. If either FreeCAD or Blender devs asked for a drop of the solver under their license I'd take a look to see who we'd need permission from and make some effort. It can't be more than 10 people. Since we switched to Eigen for the matrix stuff, there would also be a decision on whether to use it prior to that change. It was completely stand alone until then. Solvespace as a whole will remain GPLv3 though.