On Mon, Apr 06, 2009 at 02:15:44PM -0500, Luke Kanies wrote: > I think there are essentially two decisions to make, with some > details around them: > > 1) Should we use a completely open Apache-style license, or a > reciprocal/viral GPL-style license?
I'm not a big fan of viral-style in most cases; it seems like giving with one hand and slapping with the other. (Depends on the software, though; I don't mind it for compilers, for example. I also don't really want to get into it.) Having said that, I think either choice is extremely generous; I'd still contribute (not that I've contributed code yet) if it was "free to distribute but not modify", OSLT. This is your baby, I can't imagine being bothered by what you choose to do with it as long as it's still free for me with my 3 machines over here. > 2) Should we require copyright assignment of any kind? My limited understanding of the legal ramifications says that yes, you probably should. [snip] > Fundamentally, I see three basic choices: > > 1) Leave them like they are. No copyright assignment, no real > copyright maintenance, GPL2 or later. This means that every > contributor ever must give permission for things like license changes, > we can't easily protect against license infringement > (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html > ), no one can ever dual license, and essentially no commercial > software can ever be produced that integrates with Puppet. > > 2) Stick to a viral/reciprocal license (probably AGPLv3) but require > Sun-style copyright contribution (which provides the project a non- > exclusive license to the copyright). This provides a single > organization with a license for all copyright, and allows that license > holder (Reductive Labs) to protect against license infringement, > provide patent indemnity (which I've already been asked about by > others but cannot currently offer), relicense Puppet (and produce > commercial software that integrates with that relicensed product), > and probably more. > > 3) Switch to a non-reciprocal license (e.g., Apache) and don't require > copyright coassignment. This allows anyone to do anything with the > code, so there's no real concern about license infringement and anyone > can make commercial add-ons. This is both good and bad, though, in > that even those with no commitment to Puppet's community could build > commercial products on it, which I think is not so great. I agree that #2 seems best. I'm really shocked by the Chef project; it seems really offensive to me, and I'd like to see you guys go in a direction that stops someone from just rebundling Puppet and calling it theirs. -Robin -- They say: "The first AIs will be built by the military as weapons." And I'm thinking: "Does it even occur to you to try for something other than the default outcome?" -- http://shorl.com/tydruhedufogre http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Users" group. To post to this group, send email to puppet-users@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/puppet-users?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
