Contribution agreements (Re: [sldev] What is the point offirstlook and giving feedback to LL)

Ricky kf6kjg at gmail.com
Wed May 7 15:44:22 PDT 2008


Just my 2 cents ;D

As has been stated, any perceived "violation of trust" by LL would
immediately result in a fork.  Forking is common in Open Source, and I
believe in Free Software as well, whenever there is an irreconcilable
difference in ideology or implementation.  That ability is our (the OS
Developers,) safety net.  If LL, or any company/group/individual publishing
open source software, breaks trust, then the community forks.

This is not to say that I expect such.

Again, this was only my 2 cents.
Ricky
(Cron Stardust)

On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 3:21 PM, Matthew Dowd <matthew.dowd at hotmail.co.uk>
wrote:

>
>
> > I think this is where I was (perhaps am) confused. As far as I know, the
>
> > commercial license that Electric Sheep has to produce the onrez SL
> > viewer for use by CSI-NY allows them to use any GPLed components of the
> > LL GPLed viewer that they like.
>
> As I understand Richard's criterion, is that Richard wants the
> contribution agreement to ensure that if LL takes a contribution, that
> contribution *must* be included in *at least one* release of the open
> source/free viewer.
>
> The agreement will (as now) give LL the right to include that contribution
> in a closed source/commercial viewer, but also (as now) give LL the right
> not to include the contribution.
>
> Also (as now), LL has the right not to include the contribution in future
> versions (either closedsource/commercial or free/opensource),
>
> but if LL includes the contribution in any version
> (closedsource/commercial or free/opensource or whatever), at least one (and
> possible only one) of the free/opensource released must include it.
>
> This of course doesn't stop LL entering into a special agreement with a
> programmer if they really want a contribution in a closedsource viewer,
> which they don't want ever to appear in the opensource/free one, and if the
> contributor is happy with that.
>
> In theory, LL could include a contribution for just one release and then
> immediately roll the contribution back on in the next release just to get
> around this, but I can't really see a real life scenario where there would
> be any advantage for them to do this which would sufficient offset the loss
> of trust from the opensource community which doing this would cause!
>
> Matthew
>
>
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