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If you fork Mayan EDMS into a closed or private respository, stop and think about what you are doing because you going about it the wrong way. Likewise if you f

If you fork Mayan EDMS into a closed or private respository, stop and think about what you are doing because you going about it the wrong way. Likewise if you fork Mayan EDMS and the first patch you commit is to change the name, stop. Both of those are allowed under the GPL. See http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/61038 http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/61038 for the former, and the latter is allowed under just about any open source license so long as you adhere with the rest of the terms; in fact, that's the pre-GitHub definition of a "project fork". Under the GPL, others are even free to sell your software as long as they link/ship the source code (probably not what's happening in your case, but I'm mentioning that anyway for the sake of discussion). How will this affect the future of Mayan EDMS? It is too early to tell, what is certain is that the latest technologies being added to Mayan EDMS must be protected until they are ready to be released. I might be biased because anything I write is MIT/BSD-licensed, but I don't understand why the fact that there's a few "unauthorized" forks of your project out there is deterring you from continuing working on it. Chances are, those forks have not a single user, and even if they do, so what?

siloraptor 14y ago
I'm not opposed to the forks, there are 31 forks in github alone. My gripe is with at least three fork, two being distributed under different names and whose only patches are a name changed. Those may not be illegal, but are unnecessary and unethical. The last fork is being distributed with just a simple change of name also but being sold and no instruction or apparent source code is being distributed. "If you are distributing the software, your responsibilities kick in."
orangethirty 14y ago
You make fair points. My personal opinion is that we do have a license issue pending. There is an un-written gentleman's (gentle person) agreement about open source software, where there is a minimum amount of respect towards other peoples work. This is my biggest gripe here. I feel the spirit of this is being violated. The project was started about two years ago, and Roberto never thought it would reach this point. As much as we love the GPL, I think its time to move on.

siloraptor 14y ago

I'm not opposed to the forks, there are 31 forks in github alone. My gripe is with at least three fork, two being distributed under different names and whose only patches are a name changed. Those may not be illegal, but are unnecessary and unethical. The last fork is being distributed with just a simple change of name also but being sold and no instruction or apparent source code is being distributed. "If you are distributing the software, your responsibilities kick in."

orangethirty 14y ago

You make fair points. My personal opinion is that we do have a license issue pending. There is an un-written gentleman's (gentle person) agreement about open source software, where there is a minimum amount of respect towards other peoples work. This is my biggest gripe here. I feel the spirit of this is being violated. The project was started about two years ago, and Roberto never thought it would reach this point. As much as we love the GPL, I think its time to move on.