7 ms·

My new rule is to never contribute and do my best to avoid using any free software that requires a CLA. Shared copyright ownership is very important to maintain

My new rule is to never contribute and do my best to avoid using any free software that requires a CLA. Shared copyright ownership is very important to maintaining software freedoms. It makes it impossible for a single party to change the license in ways counter to the communities desires. There have been many recent examples of this sort of bad behavior that have driven this point home for me.

palata 2y ago
Agreed: don't sign a CLA! But then following this philosophy, shouldn't you favour copyleft licenses, too? Because if it's permissive, they can suddenly go proprietary without caring "much" about copyrights, right? I have come to these rules: - Never sign a CLA. - In my projects, the "most permissive" licence I use is MPLv2 (which is weak copyleft). When I release OSS software, there is absolutely no point in using a permissive license: MPLv2 should be fine for everybody. Of course sometimes I like the GPL family, and recently I've come to like the EUPL.
- deleted 2y ago
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- patmorgan23 2y ago
  Would you sign a CLA if it specified the License your code would be able to the project under? (I.e. the project can only use your code if it says MIT or BSD or GPL licensed). CLAs can have a legitimate purpose in clarifying copyright ownerships.
  - palata 2y ago
    > Would you sign a CLA if it specified the License your code would be able to the project under? I don't understand. > CLAs can have a legitimate purpose in clarifying copyright ownerships. Isn't that the whole point of a CLA? The CLA is usually a way for the contributor to renounce their copyright. In other words, the project asks me to make a contribution for free, and on top of that they want to own the copyright for it. If they want to own the copyright for my work, how about they pay me?
    - bluGill 2y ago
      i'm fine with my company owning copyright on code I write. Sometimes they let me keep copyright on things I contribute to open source on their time but I get permission before I do that. (they are considering changing the rules such that they retain the copyright and then I would contribute back in their name not my own)
      - palata 2y ago
        > i'm fine with my company owning copyright on code I write Sure, but that's not a CLA. You have a contract, and your company buys your work. If you contribute for free to a random project and they ask you to sign a CLA, they are not paying you for your work. They just want your work + your copyright for free.
        KPGv2 2y ago
        A CLA doesn't give them your copyright; you still own it, and you're licensing it (hence the "L" in "CLA") to them. And, at least under US law, non-remunerative license agreements can be revoked under certain situations (usually having to do with that free work being turned into profit for the licensor IIRC although I admittedly haven't thought about this aspect of copyright law in twenty years)
    - matheusmoreira 2y ago
      > If they want to own the copyright for my work, how about they pay me? If you want to merge your code into someone else's repository, thereby benefiting from their continued maintenance efforts, how about you give them the copyright? You don't have to if you don't want to. You can keep your copyright by merging your improvements into your own fork and maintaining it yourself. It is within your power. Seems like a fair deal to me. Everyone gets a nice AGPLv3 project to hack on. That's freedom and it is assured. If you want someone else to maintain that project for you the least you can do is give them control over it by assigning copyright. It's still AGPLv3 for everyone else, and it gives the maintainers the leverage needed to negotiate deals with corporations. Companies paying for exceptions to the GPL is something even Stallman promotes. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html This is a good thing and strengthens free software. Being against this is a position so extreme that even Stallman rejects it. And it can't be done if you need the consent of every single contributor. I even emailed Stallman directly to confirm the ethics of this. He says it's better this way because only the copyright owner can do it. Permissive licenses give everyone that power. Copyleft keeps it contained. > It is my understanding that as the copyright holders > they have the right to do it without any problems. > They leverage the AGPLv3 to make it harder for their > competitors to use the code to compete against them. I see what you mean. The original developer can engage in a practice that blocks coopertation. By contrast, using some other license, such as the ordinary GPL, would permitt ANY user of the program to engage in that practice. In a perverse sense that could seem more fair, but I think it is also more harmful. On balance, using the AGPL is better.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    That is dangerious. While unlikely there are a few possible attachs. If the law changes such that the license is invalid you need to change to an up dated versian. if you allow them to change the license for that case they can change the license to anything. Consult with a lawyer to see if there is legal language that allows them to change the license as needed only so long as it meets the intent... note that intent is tricky. GPL 2 and 3 do not have the same intent according to Linus Torvalds but Richard Stallmen will say they do. good luck getting you contract to allow license changes if the intent is the same and having it really be your intent. the above all seems unlikely but you cannot discount it. which is another reason to not sign a CLA - you have no idea what future changes you might agree with.
    - mcny 2y ago
      Can you please share why it is dangerous? If I release some code that I wrote myself, I own this code so I can always re release it in another strongly copy left license if there is a defect in AGPL v3 or whatever.
      - bluGill 2y ago
        If you sign a CLA you no longer own that code. Thus you trust who ever now owns the code to make decisions you agree with but have no way to assure that. depending on the terms you may own the code but it isn't a useful right as without everyone else including them you can't use your right to get a good license in place (one they disagree with so of course they won't)
        Benjamin_Dobell 2y ago
        I see you've repeated this in a few comments. Do you have a link? By the way, I'm not disagreeing. I'm Australian and curious about the US situation. My understanding was that whilst you can't assign copyright — insofar as you ought to always be able refer to yourself as the original author — you can provide an irrevocable license giving someone else the rights to reproduce, license and sublicense as they see fit.
  - makemyworkforme 2y ago
    How do you need CLAs to clarify copyright ownership? DCoE does the job equally well.
- bad_user 2y ago
  This is usually a misunderstanding of permissive licenses. You can't change the license of the code, even if that license is permissive enough for the code to be incorporated in proprietary works. I mean, often this doesn't really matter because, unlike with GPL, publishers are not required to give you the source-code. But it matters when that source-code gets republished, say, under a source-available license, after having been under MIT/BSD/APL2, in which case, that's illegal, unless the company owns the copyright to do so. As an example — if you have a file with a copyright header saying the code is licensed under a permissive license, you can't just change that header to a different license. There's even a famous case about it: https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20070913014315 https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20070913014315 It all comes down to copyright. If you copy a piece of code that's not trivial, even if the license allows you to copy and reuse that piece of code, you're not suddenly the copyright owner of that code. Permissive licenses are permissive, but they do have restrictions, and most importantly, with copyrighted works, excluding the fair use cases that depend on legislation, you can only do what the license allows you to. So, no, code licensed under permissive licenses can't be re-licensed as proprietary, even if it can be incorporated in proprietary works. And this is often a useful distinction to make, as I can think of several re-licensed projects under source-available licenses that couldn't have been re-licensed without copyright assignments.
  - notpushkin 2y ago
    > There's even a famous case about it Note this is not a legal case which has been ruled on, just an opinion. It sounds reasonable to me, but also not a hill I would die on personally.
  - palata 2y ago
    I didn't mean "re-licenced". I meant that it can become closed-source. Bad wording on my end. Now I guess they can modify permissively-licenced files without licencing their modifications permissively, in which case the file is a mix between both, and good luck making the difference?
bruce511 2y ago
Your rule is a common one, but somewhat misses the point of the argument. In the absence of a CLA who does own the copyright to the work you do? The point of the article us that it may, or may not, be you. I notice that you weren't clear on this part in your post, suggesting perhaps that it's not something that's front-of-mind like the CLA is. On the CLA front I'm on the fence. Assign, don't assign, that's for each person to decide. But the alternative to CLA is not necessarily "I keep the copyright". That's the point the article is asking you to consider. Aside; unless you have a specific bit of paper assigning copyright to you, and assuming you have a day job, it's very unlikely that you hold the copyright even if you only do OSS work at home on weekends. And lastly - have you ever enforced your copyright legally? If you have never enforced a copyright violation then your work is effectively public domain. Yes the threat that you could take action exists, but in practice your contributed-to-project can change their license and call your bluff.
- mcny 2y ago
  I am sorry but I don't understand what you're saying. > Your rule is a common one, but somewhat misses the point of the argument. In the absence of a CLA who does own the copyright to the work you do? If I don't own the copyright in the absence of a CLA, then I don't have the authority to sign a CLA and therefore the CLA should be void. I can't sell/gift/whatever you something I don't own. Disclaimer: I anal. Even if I were a lawyer which I am not, I am definitely NOT your lawyer.
  - bruce511 2y ago
    Very true, you cannot assign what is not yours. (Ianal, but I assume that means if you did sign a CLA and submit then you are breaking copyright.) But that's not my point. My point is that "not signing a CLA" is only half the job. The other part of the job is actively finding out your status with your company to understand their position. (And I recommend getting that answer in writing. )
- makemyworkforme 2y ago
  The contributor owns the copyright. In Germany for example, there's no transfer of copyright, only non-exclusive license to use. The Developer Certificate of Origin can be used to be make it legal.
matheusmoreira 2y ago
You should consider signing one anyway depending on whether you like the creator. This gives the maintainer of the project a way to make money from his work: sublicensing it to companies under a different license. This promotes the use of extreme copyleft licenses like the AGPLv3. I actually emailed Stallman to ask about the ethics of this. He replied that it's better for everyone when only the creator has this power. Permissive licenses give everyone else that power too. Copyleft licenses don't. Only the copyright owner can sublicense. Others must comply or pay for it. > It is my understanding that as the copyright holders > they have the right to do it without any problems. > They leverage the AGPLv3 to make it harder for their > competitors to use the code to compete against them. I see what you mean. The original developer can engage in a practice that blocks coopertation. By contrast, using some other license, such as the ordinary GPL, would permitt ANY user of the program to engage in that practice. In a perverse sense that could seem more fair, but I think it is also more harmful. On balance, using the AGPL is better.
- KPGv2 2y ago
  > Only the copyright owner can sublicense If that were true, then the distribution of OSS would be illegal. If I contribute to an open source project, I have licensed my code to that project. If someone downloads that project, the OSS project has sublicensed my code to them. I doubt there's a CLA in the world that doesn't grant the right to sublicense. For example, here is the CLA for VS Code: https://opensource.microsoft.com/pdf/microsoft-contribution-license-agreement.pdf https://opensource.microsoft.com/pdf/microsoft-contribution-... the key bit is: > You grant Microsoft . . . a . . . license . . . to sublicense any or all of the foregoing rights to third parties
  - matheusmoreira 2y ago
    I probably used the wrong word. I intended to say "release the software to someone else under a different license". If you own the copyrights, you can release code to the general public under AGPLv3 and simultaneously allow some specific third party to use the software under completely different terms. Other people can't do that, they are stuck with AGPLv3. Not a lawyer so I could be terribly mistaken about all this. Hopefully someone will tell me if I'm talking nonsense.
plagiarist 2y ago
I don't understand why this isn't everyone's policy for open-source contributions.
- oldmanhorton 2y ago
  Surely there is a middle ground for contributions which you don't really care to retain ownership of? I don't sign CLAs for projects I want to form a long term contributor relationship with, but if I am just trying to fix a small bug that the (probably corporate) owners don't care to fix themselves, I'll sign that code away without hesitation.
  - KPGv2 2y ago
    FWIW CLAs do not sign away your ownership in code. It merely gives the project the right to use your code via a license You know how you sign those end-user *license* agreements, which do not give you ownership in the code of those applications? That's the same principle at work here. You are licensing certain rights in your work to another entity. Generally, the license is giving the right to, inter alia, reproduce and distribute your code in perpetuity.
- surajrmal 2y ago
  Because 1) I work on an open source project as part of my employment, not for free on the side and 2) If there was no cla, most likely the source would not be open as the project wouldn't want external contributions. That's strictly worse. Also, the types of contributions that the project would ideally see are mostly from other companies, not people working in their free time, so the cla doesn't really discourage contribution.
rendaw 2y ago
It also makes it impossible for a single (or multiple parties) to change the license in ways in line with the community's desire, including moving to more permissive licenses. And I'm not really sure I get the risk here. Projects (Redis, Terraform) changed license, the community responded by forking, and the result is at worst more fragmentation. If a company doesn't think a project is worth maintaining without a more monetizable license having multiple code owners isn't going to force them to keep maintaining the software. I'm not saying multiple owners doesn't have benefits, but it's far from clear enough to present a cut and dried policy like this I think.
- eikenberry 2y ago
  > It also makes it impossible for a single (or multiple parties) to change the license in ways in line with the community's desire, including moving to more permissive licenses. You contribute under the existing license because you approve of that license. Not allowing change is not allowing change... there is no way to make it to allow only change you like. So it is a compromise and, IMO, a good one. .. And, while not specifically relevant to my point, moving to a more permissive license isn't necessarily a good thing. > If a company doesn't think a project is worth maintaining without a more monetizable license having multiple code owners isn't going to force them to keep maintaining the software. My thought is that it would be better if companies didn't have this option. That releasing software under a free software license but then reserving the rights to change it later for business reasons is bad behavior. It is using free software as a marketing tool while you keep on hand on to yank it out from under your users at a whim. I think free software is better (best?) when developed to scratch an itch and released to reduce the long term maintenance and development burden (and hopefully some altruistic leanings).
- afiori 2y ago
  To an extent I think that the outrage over redis new licence was excessive, this based on two (I think true) facts: 1. The new limitations had a temporal limitation of two years since release, that is every commit/release would automatically return to the old license after two years of the commit/release publication date 2. Using a two years old version is not that bad unless you are a cloud vendor reselling the software 3. A permissive license in this case was effectively a lot of free money given to Amazon

palata 2y ago

Agreed: don't sign a CLA! But then following this philosophy, shouldn't you favour copyleft licenses, too? Because if it's permissive, they can suddenly go proprietary without caring "much" about copyrights, right? I have come to these rules: - Never sign a CLA. - In my projects, the "most permissive" licence I use is MPLv2 (which is weak copyleft). When I release OSS software, there is absolutely no point in using a permissive license: MPLv2 should be fine for everybody. Of course sometimes I like the GPL family, and recently I've come to like the EUPL.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
patmorgan23 2y ago
Would you sign a CLA if it specified the License your code would be able to the project under? (I.e. the project can only use your code if it says MIT or BSD or GPL licensed). CLAs can have a legitimate purpose in clarifying copyright ownerships.
- palata 2y ago
  > Would you sign a CLA if it specified the License your code would be able to the project under? I don't understand. > CLAs can have a legitimate purpose in clarifying copyright ownerships. Isn't that the whole point of a CLA? The CLA is usually a way for the contributor to renounce their copyright. In other words, the project asks me to make a contribution for free, and on top of that they want to own the copyright for it. If they want to own the copyright for my work, how about they pay me?
  - bluGill 2y ago
    i'm fine with my company owning copyright on code I write. Sometimes they let me keep copyright on things I contribute to open source on their time but I get permission before I do that. (they are considering changing the rules such that they retain the copyright and then I would contribute back in their name not my own)
    - palata 2y ago
      > i'm fine with my company owning copyright on code I write Sure, but that's not a CLA. You have a contract, and your company buys your work. If you contribute for free to a random project and they ask you to sign a CLA, they are not paying you for your work. They just want your work + your copyright for free.
      - KPGv2 2y ago
        A CLA doesn't give them your copyright; you still own it, and you're licensing it (hence the "L" in "CLA") to them. And, at least under US law, non-remunerative license agreements can be revoked under certain situations (usually having to do with that free work being turned into profit for the licensor IIRC although I admittedly haven't thought about this aspect of copyright law in twenty years)
  - matheusmoreira 2y ago
    > If they want to own the copyright for my work, how about they pay me? If you want to merge your code into someone else's repository, thereby benefiting from their continued maintenance efforts, how about you give them the copyright? You don't have to if you don't want to. You can keep your copyright by merging your improvements into your own fork and maintaining it yourself. It is within your power. Seems like a fair deal to me. Everyone gets a nice AGPLv3 project to hack on. That's freedom and it is assured. If you want someone else to maintain that project for you the least you can do is give them control over it by assigning copyright. It's still AGPLv3 for everyone else, and it gives the maintainers the leverage needed to negotiate deals with corporations. Companies paying for exceptions to the GPL is something even Stallman promotes. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html This is a good thing and strengthens free software. Being against this is a position so extreme that even Stallman rejects it. And it can't be done if you need the consent of every single contributor. I even emailed Stallman directly to confirm the ethics of this. He says it's better this way because only the copyright owner can do it. Permissive licenses give everyone that power. Copyleft keeps it contained. > It is my understanding that as the copyright holders > they have the right to do it without any problems. > They leverage the AGPLv3 to make it harder for their > competitors to use the code to compete against them. I see what you mean. The original developer can engage in a practice that blocks coopertation. By contrast, using some other license, such as the ordinary GPL, would permitt ANY user of the program to engage in that practice. In a perverse sense that could seem more fair, but I think it is also more harmful. On balance, using the AGPL is better.
- bluGill 2y ago
  That is dangerious. While unlikely there are a few possible attachs. If the law changes such that the license is invalid you need to change to an up dated versian. if you allow them to change the license for that case they can change the license to anything. Consult with a lawyer to see if there is legal language that allows them to change the license as needed only so long as it meets the intent... note that intent is tricky. GPL 2 and 3 do not have the same intent according to Linus Torvalds but Richard Stallmen will say they do. good luck getting you contract to allow license changes if the intent is the same and having it really be your intent. the above all seems unlikely but you cannot discount it. which is another reason to not sign a CLA - you have no idea what future changes you might agree with.
  - mcny 2y ago
    Can you please share why it is dangerous? If I release some code that I wrote myself, I own this code so I can always re release it in another strongly copy left license if there is a defect in AGPL v3 or whatever.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      If you sign a CLA you no longer own that code. Thus you trust who ever now owns the code to make decisions you agree with but have no way to assure that. depending on the terms you may own the code but it isn't a useful right as without everyone else including them you can't use your right to get a good license in place (one they disagree with so of course they won't)
      - Benjamin_Dobell 2y ago
        I see you've repeated this in a few comments. Do you have a link? By the way, I'm not disagreeing. I'm Australian and curious about the US situation. My understanding was that whilst you can't assign copyright — insofar as you ought to always be able refer to yourself as the original author — you can provide an irrevocable license giving someone else the rights to reproduce, license and sublicense as they see fit.
- makemyworkforme 2y ago
  How do you need CLAs to clarify copyright ownership? DCoE does the job equally well.
bad_user 2y ago
This is usually a misunderstanding of permissive licenses. You can't change the license of the code, even if that license is permissive enough for the code to be incorporated in proprietary works. I mean, often this doesn't really matter because, unlike with GPL, publishers are not required to give you the source-code. But it matters when that source-code gets republished, say, under a source-available license, after having been under MIT/BSD/APL2, in which case, that's illegal, unless the company owns the copyright to do so. As an example — if you have a file with a copyright header saying the code is licensed under a permissive license, you can't just change that header to a different license. There's even a famous case about it: https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20070913014315 https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20070913014315 It all comes down to copyright. If you copy a piece of code that's not trivial, even if the license allows you to copy and reuse that piece of code, you're not suddenly the copyright owner of that code. Permissive licenses are permissive, but they do have restrictions, and most importantly, with copyrighted works, excluding the fair use cases that depend on legislation, you can only do what the license allows you to. So, no, code licensed under permissive licenses can't be re-licensed as proprietary, even if it can be incorporated in proprietary works. And this is often a useful distinction to make, as I can think of several re-licensed projects under source-available licenses that couldn't have been re-licensed without copyright assignments.
- notpushkin 2y ago
  > There's even a famous case about it Note this is not a legal case which has been ruled on, just an opinion. It sounds reasonable to me, but also not a hill I would die on personally.
- palata 2y ago
  I didn't mean "re-licenced". I meant that it can become closed-source. Bad wording on my end. Now I guess they can modify permissively-licenced files without licencing their modifications permissively, in which case the file is a mix between both, and good luck making the difference?

bruce511 2y ago

Your rule is a common one, but somewhat misses the point of the argument. In the absence of a CLA who does own the copyright to the work you do? The point of the article us that it may, or may not, be you. I notice that you weren't clear on this part in your post, suggesting perhaps that it's not something that's front-of-mind like the CLA is. On the CLA front I'm on the fence. Assign, don't assign, that's for each person to decide. But the alternative to CLA is not necessarily "I keep the copyright". That's the point the article is asking you to consider. Aside; unless you have a specific bit of paper assigning copyright to you, and assuming you have a day job, it's very unlikely that you hold the copyright even if you only do OSS work at home on weekends. And lastly - have you ever enforced your copyright legally? If you have never enforced a copyright violation then your work is effectively public domain. Yes the threat that you could take action exists, but in practice your contributed-to-project can change their license and call your bluff.

mcny 2y ago
I am sorry but I don't understand what you're saying. > Your rule is a common one, but somewhat misses the point of the argument. In the absence of a CLA who does own the copyright to the work you do? If I don't own the copyright in the absence of a CLA, then I don't have the authority to sign a CLA and therefore the CLA should be void. I can't sell/gift/whatever you something I don't own. Disclaimer: I anal. Even if I were a lawyer which I am not, I am definitely NOT your lawyer.
- bruce511 2y ago
  Very true, you cannot assign what is not yours. (Ianal, but I assume that means if you did sign a CLA and submit then you are breaking copyright.) But that's not my point. My point is that "not signing a CLA" is only half the job. The other part of the job is actively finding out your status with your company to understand their position. (And I recommend getting that answer in writing. )
makemyworkforme 2y ago
The contributor owns the copyright. In Germany for example, there's no transfer of copyright, only non-exclusive license to use. The Developer Certificate of Origin can be used to be make it legal.

matheusmoreira 2y ago

You should consider signing one anyway depending on whether you like the creator. This gives the maintainer of the project a way to make money from his work: sublicensing it to companies under a different license. This promotes the use of extreme copyleft licenses like the AGPLv3. I actually emailed Stallman to ask about the ethics of this. He replied that it's better for everyone when only the creator has this power. Permissive licenses give everyone else that power too. Copyleft licenses don't. Only the copyright owner can sublicense. Others must comply or pay for it. > It is my understanding that as the copyright holders > they have the right to do it without any problems. > They leverage the AGPLv3 to make it harder for their > competitors to use the code to compete against them. I see what you mean. The original developer can engage in a practice that blocks coopertation. By contrast, using some other license, such as the ordinary GPL, would permitt ANY user of the program to engage in that practice. In a perverse sense that could seem more fair, but I think it is also more harmful. On balance, using the AGPL is better.

KPGv2 2y ago
> Only the copyright owner can sublicense If that were true, then the distribution of OSS would be illegal. If I contribute to an open source project, I have licensed my code to that project. If someone downloads that project, the OSS project has sublicensed my code to them. I doubt there's a CLA in the world that doesn't grant the right to sublicense. For example, here is the CLA for VS Code: https://opensource.microsoft.com/pdf/microsoft-contribution-license-agreement.pdf https://opensource.microsoft.com/pdf/microsoft-contribution-... the key bit is: > You grant Microsoft . . . a . . . license . . . to sublicense any or all of the foregoing rights to third parties
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  I probably used the wrong word. I intended to say "release the software to someone else under a different license". If you own the copyrights, you can release code to the general public under AGPLv3 and simultaneously allow some specific third party to use the software under completely different terms. Other people can't do that, they are stuck with AGPLv3. Not a lawyer so I could be terribly mistaken about all this. Hopefully someone will tell me if I'm talking nonsense.

plagiarist 2y ago

I don't understand why this isn't everyone's policy for open-source contributions.

oldmanhorton 2y ago
Surely there is a middle ground for contributions which you don't really care to retain ownership of? I don't sign CLAs for projects I want to form a long term contributor relationship with, but if I am just trying to fix a small bug that the (probably corporate) owners don't care to fix themselves, I'll sign that code away without hesitation.
- KPGv2 2y ago
  FWIW CLAs do not sign away your ownership in code. It merely gives the project the right to use your code via a license You know how you sign those end-user *license* agreements, which do not give you ownership in the code of those applications? That's the same principle at work here. You are licensing certain rights in your work to another entity. Generally, the license is giving the right to, inter alia, reproduce and distribute your code in perpetuity.
surajrmal 2y ago
Because 1) I work on an open source project as part of my employment, not for free on the side and 2) If there was no cla, most likely the source would not be open as the project wouldn't want external contributions. That's strictly worse. Also, the types of contributions that the project would ideally see are mostly from other companies, not people working in their free time, so the cla doesn't really discourage contribution.

rendaw 2y ago

It also makes it impossible for a single (or multiple parties) to change the license in ways in line with the community's desire, including moving to more permissive licenses. And I'm not really sure I get the risk here. Projects (Redis, Terraform) changed license, the community responded by forking, and the result is at worst more fragmentation. If a company doesn't think a project is worth maintaining without a more monetizable license having multiple code owners isn't going to force them to keep maintaining the software. I'm not saying multiple owners doesn't have benefits, but it's far from clear enough to present a cut and dried policy like this I think.

eikenberry 2y ago
> It also makes it impossible for a single (or multiple parties) to change the license in ways in line with the community's desire, including moving to more permissive licenses. You contribute under the existing license because you approve of that license. Not allowing change is not allowing change... there is no way to make it to allow only change you like. So it is a compromise and, IMO, a good one. .. And, while not specifically relevant to my point, moving to a more permissive license isn't necessarily a good thing. > If a company doesn't think a project is worth maintaining without a more monetizable license having multiple code owners isn't going to force them to keep maintaining the software. My thought is that it would be better if companies didn't have this option. That releasing software under a free software license but then reserving the rights to change it later for business reasons is bad behavior. It is using free software as a marketing tool while you keep on hand on to yank it out from under your users at a whim. I think free software is better (best?) when developed to scratch an itch and released to reduce the long term maintenance and development burden (and hopefully some altruistic leanings).
afiori 2y ago
To an extent I think that the outrage over redis new licence was excessive, this based on two (I think true) facts: 1. The new limitations had a temporal limitation of two years since release, that is every commit/release would automatically return to the old license after two years of the commit/release publication date 2. Using a two years old version is not that bad unless you are a cloud vendor reselling the software 3. A permissive license in this case was effectively a lot of free money given to Amazon