On Dec 04, 2012, at 06:42 PM, Ian Jackson wrote: >That allows Canonical to make proprietary forks of the code (eg, to >engage in the dual licensing business model). This is very >troublesome for me; it's too asymmetric a relationship.
Not to diminish your own concerns, but it doesn't bother me. To take a hypothetical case, let's say Skype were free software, and available on Debian. I write some clever hack to allow me to make phone calls in Emacs. I would have no qualms about signing a similar contributor agreement with Microsoft because I know a free version of my code will always be available, no matter what they do with it. I'd even hope they accept my contribution because while my patch has value, so does the larger body of code that it applies to, and for me, there is even more value in having that combination available upstream so more people can benefit from it. My patch has less value as a patch that someone has to apply independently and rebuild. -Barry
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