On Oct 19, 7:38 pm, Phil Hagelberg <p...@hagelb.org> wrote: > On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 4:26 PM, Rich Hickey <richhic...@gmail.com> wrote: > >http://contributing.openoffice.org/programming.html > > This is probably not a good example; the copyright assignment policy > for OpenOffice has caused the active contributors to fork it into > LibreOffice, which does not have such a policy: > > http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/biz-enterprise/366193:libreoffic... >
That may be your take on it, but they worked under the Sun SCA for quite a while. By all reports this fork seems more to be about stewardship under Oracle and the rate of change. Now they are locked into a license (the alternative to having CAs). They don't really have an option, as they don't hold the original CAs. Taking CAs now for new code wouldn't give them any more license flexibility, so it makes sense that they don't bother. Note here (http://keionline.org/ec-mysql) where Stallman himself argues for the importance of license flexibility: "There are fundamental and unavoidable legal obstacles to combining code from programs licensed under the different GPL versions." "the lack of a more flexible license* for MySQL will present considerable barriers to a new forked development path for MySQL" I'd rather have CAs than be locked into a license. As the primary author of the project, that's my choice, and these examples simply show it's not an unusual or non-mainstream one. Clojure's CA is a lose-nothing affair. It is not a copyright transfer, contributors retain all the rights in their work. And it makes the will-remain-open promise (which Sun was forced to add the their SCA early on, due to community pressure). It is in fact that clause which is preventing Oracle from taking the JDK (et al) closed moving forward. Yes, having a CA is a hurdle. Almost 200 people have managed to get over it. Rich -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
