On Mon, 2009-01-05 at 23:46 +0100, Sebastian Bauer wrote: > Hello, i want to release some code, but i have one problem: > > how impel peoples to send me back patches?
You can't really force that with any existing Open Source license. They aren't designed to force people to support the original author. Rather, a number exist (the GPL being the primary example) to force people to share patches with any downstream users. That is, if somebody distributes a changed version, they must also distribute the changes they made and allow people to redistribute and change further (that's the nub of the GPL approach). There's even the Affero GPL which (re)defines "distribution" to mean "making available as a network service, such as a webserver". Of course, the original author can take advantage of such patch distributions and incorporate them into his own version, but that code is then licensed to you under the same terms (you aren't the copyright holder of the patches sent to you), so you have the same redistribution responsibilities. In short (and I'm not giving legal advice, but just the lay of the land): if you want to *require* people to distribute changes whenever they use your software in an online service, look at the Affero GPL, if you want to prevent modified versions from being distributed without permitting downstream changes, look at the GPL. If you just want people to acknowledge your work and copyrights and use it as they see fit, look at the BSD or MIT/X or Apache licenses (Python and Django and many packages in the Python space are under the BSD license). Just bear in mind how the social systems work. People will send you patches because they want to improve the software, now because they are forced to. If there are onerous requirements on using the package, such as a custom license or something like that, it will have the effect of meaning people won't use your software, not that they will use it and welcome your conditions. Regards, Malcolm --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to django-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
