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

Richard M Stallman rms at gnu.org
Sat May 10 01:55:35 PDT 2008


    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?

For the most part, I think that is NOT an issue.

Here's my basis for looking at these issues.

Suppose that the program were released under the Revised BSD license.
That is free software, thus basically ethical.
It would allow anyone at all to make modified proprietary
versions, and they wouldn't even have to pay Linden Labs.
But I don't think it is wrong to contribute to that program
if I am confident its developers will continue to release
it under the same Revised BSD license.

If a scenario for this licensing scheme is no worse than that scenario,
then I don't see a it as a reason to refuse to contribute.

I designed my suggestion on this basis.


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