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Copyright assignment is basically required if you're going to sell an open source project under a different license. It's not usually nefarious, all that contri
by mrkurt 14y ago
Copyright assignment is basically required if you're going to sell an open source project under a different license. It's not usually nefarious, all that contributed code is still available under GPL.
- jacques_chester 14y agoThe point is that if one entity owns the original copyright, they can wreak sufficient havoc that the project can splinter into individually anaemic forks. MySQL has splintered into at least 3 competing forks outside of the "real" MySQL: MariaDB, Percona and Drizzle.
- fallenpegasus 14y agoI wouldn't say they "compete", at least, not harmfully. Maria and Percona swap patches with each other, and are drop-in replacements for MySQL. Drizzle is an exploration of the idea of paying off as much as possible of MySQL's technical debt and throwing away crufty backwards compatibility. The technical ecology of users and developers around MySQL is healthier than it has ever been.
- davidw 14y ago> going to sell an open source project under a different license It's required where you want to sell a restrictively licensed (GPL, say) open source project under a commercial license. If it's licensed under something like the Apache license or BSD, you can do what you want with it. But then, so can everyone else, so you don't have the advantage you would with the dual license and require copyright assignment strategy.
- rbanffy 14y ago> restrictively licensed (GPL, say) open source project Please, stop spreading this meme. The only thing GPL restricts is companies who want to restrict the freedoms of their users. Software, sex and yes, users, are better when free.
- davidw 14y agoI didn't pass any judgment on it, I just said it's more restrictive than a BSD style license. I have opinions on the two licenses, and could probably write a fairly lengthly article on it: "it's complicated".
- rbanffy 14y agoYou can call it more "robust", "strict" or a number of other words that more precisely reflect the GPL role and goals.
- veridies 14y agoGPL is restrictive. It may be unacceptable to put GPLd apps on the App Store because of Apple's regulations, for instance. It makes it impossible to integrate Pixar's new open-sourced code with Blender, because the licenses conflict. Sure, the problems are caused by the contradictory licenses, but GPL is part of the problem here.
- gillianseed 14y ago> It makes it impossible to integrate Pixar's new open-sourced code with Blender, because the licenses conflict. Because Pixar's code is licenced under another restricted licence (MS-PL) which is crafted to be incompatible with GPL. Apparently Pixar is talking with Ton Rosendaal (Blender development leader) about solving the licence issue so it seems it won't be 'impossible' after all. Likely some sort of dual-licencing solution will take place.
- veridies 14y agoWhich will be great, but this isn't the only project using MS-PL. And if the GPL didn't include its "strong copyleft" text, there wouldn't be an issue. It's coercion which tries to make everything freer, but in this case made things less free.