On Jun 5, 2011, at 11:01 AM, Simon Phipps wrote: > > The plain fact is that Apache's rules do not allow any section of > Apache-maintained code to be licensed under copyleft licenses. That means > that groups of people who have made the the equally valid choice to have > their work licensed under LGPL will be unable to collaborate within the > Apache community. As a consequence, any part of the OOo/LO codebase whose > locus of development moves to Apache cannot be co-developed by people > preferring copyleft licensing. > > The folk who choose non-copyleft licensing simply won't be welcome at Apache. > While the folk who choose only Apache licensing will be welcome at > LibreOffice (since their Apache-licensed contributions can readily be used in > the LibreOffice code), they will probably not be content with a work-product > that's not Apache licensed. > > Given these plain facts, I believe it is inevitable that there will be two > projects. As such, I think it's important to get started on the "rules of > engagement" for productive co-operation rather than endlessly arguing about > licensing or the "possibility" that every developer with existing preferences > will spontaneously change them. >
Personally, I don't think it's "inevitable" at all, nor do I think it the place for people to make such statements on behalf of communities that they have, as far as I know, only limited associations with. If we want to turn this discussion into an ideological debate about copyleft and non-copyleft, then I think it's a mistake. But just recall that even the FSF admits that AL2.0 is the best license where free/open standards are competing with non-free/proprietary ones. (PS: True, people who choose "only" copyleft won't be "welcome" at the ASF (they would be welcome, really, it's just that the ASF just does AL2... it's just an environment in which they might feel as outsiders), but neither would those people who choose "only" non-copyleft feel welcome at TDF... I think most people are true pragmatics and choose the best license for the job at hand.) _______________________________________________ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
