On Mon, 6 Apr 2009, Luke Kanies wrote: > 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 think a lot of it depends on your goals. Clearly long term #1 does not work. It provides a big mess for you and puts in you a boat of only ever really being able to sell support. I feel option number 2 will further limit the number of people willing to contribute code. Especially if you plan to sell it commercially later. For instance, at my employer here I could contribute some code (and as I bone up on Ruby I may even attempt to, even if it's only some types and stuff at first). However, it gets a lot stickier contributing back if the I'm contributing code that you may be selling. Conflict and all. I must admit I'm a fan of the Apache license or a BSD license of some sort. It gives you the right to sell it while also remaining open. It also means that I don't have to have a copyright laywer on staff to modify your code and use it locally :) Jason -- Jason Slagle - RHCE /"\ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign . X - NO HTML/RTF in e-mail . / \ - NO Word docs in e-mail . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
