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"How is Tent licensed? Tent will be completely free and open and treated as a standard. To prevent fragmentation before launch, the original authors currently r

by khet 14y ago

"How is Tent licensed? Tent will be completely free and open and treated as a standard. To prevent fragmentation before launch, the original authors currently retain copyright. This is a temporary situation which will be remedied immediately after a governance model is chosen. We decided it would be best to share what we could as soon as possible, releasing early and often. We are entirely committed to free and open software and protocols with open governance models leading to a ratified standard. Tent will be released under an open license in the immediate future." I am curious as to how retaining copyright will help them prevent fragmentation? Can they not elect themselves as project leaders of the opensource project and prevent fragmentation?

morsch 14y ago
Retaining copyright means that you can't fork their code to easily establish a working but slightly incompatible version, which is what fragmentation is. Project leader is not a formalized position (or even a meaningful concept, really) in free software and doesn't come with the power to prevent forks or fragmentation. I guess their thinking is once a community of users and developers is brought together, they can be trusted to establish a model that retains compatibility since it is in everybody's interest. While at the moment, an incompatible fork would have the same "network effect" as the original. Either way, the copyright only covers the software, not the protocol.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  Retaining copyright isn't what matters. The license they choose on the copyright they (naturally) retain does. It is possible that they could craft a license such that protocol-incompatible changes are not allowed, but I don't think that would be in their best interest. This is a starting point. The risk isn't fragmentation, it's crickets (ie nobody cares) and an untested protocol that may need multiple versions to get right.

by khet 14y ago

morsch 14y ago

Retaining copyright means that you can't fork their code to easily establish a working but slightly incompatible version, which is what fragmentation is. Project leader is not a formalized position (or even a meaningful concept, really) in free software and doesn't come with the power to prevent forks or fragmentation. I guess their thinking is once a community of users and developers is brought together, they can be trusted to establish a model that retains compatibility since it is in everybody's interest. While at the moment, an incompatible fork would have the same "network effect" as the original. Either way, the copyright only covers the software, not the protocol.

SoftwareMaven 14y ago
Retaining copyright isn't what matters. The license they choose on the copyright they (naturally) retain does. It is possible that they could craft a license such that protocol-incompatible changes are not allowed, but I don't think that would be in their best interest. This is a starting point. The risk isn't fragmentation, it's crickets (ie nobody cares) and an untested protocol that may need multiple versions to get right.