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

[Lawson English]

Richard M Stallman 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. The sticking point, and it just may be 
>     I'm not reading things well, is that they decided to deliberately 
>     cripple the functionality of their viewer in order to make it more 
>     CSI:NY-audience-friendly.
>
> The really bad problem case, as it seems to me, is where Linden Labs
> releases code, for non-free software, that has MORE features than the
> free version from Linden Labs.
>
> In this case, the non-free version has LESS features.
>
> I don't think of such cases as a reason to refuse to contribute.
>
>   

I guess what I'm trying to clarify is:

as long as the original code base that Linden Lab issues a non-free (in 
your sense) license for is identical in features to the libre version, 
is it an issue if the licensee adds to or subtracts from that code base 
for their non-libre licensed software?

The original code that LL licensed is identical WHEN the 3rd party 
receives it, and they add or delete features in-house and sell or give 
away their compiled version that consists of the non-libre code with 
missing features and/or new features.

In other words, originally it was identical, but by the time it was 
released, it was not. Does it matter from your perspective if features 
were added/taken-away by the licensee as long as LL provided  the 
licensee with non-libre  source code with  features identical to the 
libre source code?

Lawson