#closed_source — Public Fediverse posts

@smallcircles @neil Are we really discussing this now? And Is it the FOSS project you know that I'm thinking of? 🙂

I've been mired in the issue tracker lately, but I've only got so much time to spend.

Here's my take. MIT and BSD licenses are nice but subject to capture, and designed to work in a world that was generally without patent trolls in a sharing, institutional education environment.

Scientists share - corporations rip you off, injecting proprietary closed sourced code into MIT licensed code they don't have to show you (a mere copyright notice stating that the product contains at least some freely licensed code will suffice in satisfying the licensing terms)... And if there's a novel "process" involved (i e., federating capabilities) they patent YOU and YOUR COLLEAGUES work for themselves.

A few years back, I was stunned to find out that #Microsoft was receiving about $7 from every single #Android device shipped for #patents they hold related to Linux.

But again, I digress...

Okay...

Basically, and for my part, I say "Copyleft", in the most general terms, and if it's software that is well suited as a self or commercially hosted SaaS offering environment, then #AGPL - but then, that begs your question: AGPL v3 or later, or AGPL v3 only?

Yes, if you say, "or later", then you run the risk of unfavorable licensing at some point in the future, but that's not a certainty.

But it is a constant, distinct possibility. Always has been.

Being a pain in the ass to go from "3 only", or to "or later", or to some other constraint is an inconvenience - that's all. Time, labor, money. That's pretty much it when it comes to re-licensing. That cost goes down if #CONTRIBUTING.md specifies that contributors agree to the project re-licensing their contributions under some other #Copyleft license at some point in the future.

To answer the rest of your question, I'mma just gonna get all #Socratic on you...

1. ) Do you trust #RMS and the #FSF? - that used to be the question to ponder, because you were actually assigning control to them.

2. ) What would #Linus do?

Actually, what did Linus do?

He chose #GPL v2 a long time ago when he re-licensed the #Linux kernel.

He also chose GPL v2 "only" - and you can search on #PeerTube for videos that have him explaining why, and further, why he is happy that he didn't choose, "or later", and how he feels that, in retrospect, that would have been a very bad thing.

So here's my 2¢, and I've already expressed this in my typical "IMNSHO" fashion a couple of times before in the project's Matrix room (if we're talking about the same project), but I'll give it again here one more time.

A.) Do it now, rather than later, or do it yesterday if that's possible yet (you may need to consult H.G. Wells or Einstein in that regard).

B.) Use a Copyleft license - specifically, I'm advocating for AGPL - but as long as it's Copyleft, preferably AGPL v3, my immediate concerns are alleviated. Whether that's "only", or "or later", that's of very little import AFAIC.

C.) Ensure that CONTRIBUTING.md states that the project is at liberty to contribute patches to the deprecated, antecedent project in the form of patches gifted to them under the terms of the MIT license - after all, we want to be good neighbors and software stewards in the #FOSS space

I've already discussed the simplicity of doing so in chat and consensus was roundly in favor with this approach, and also in doing it now.

D.) Hard fork now.

Finally, there had been much concern expressed from several of the other project members that we're going to suffer recruiting issues by not being able to insure to potential new contributors that their efforts won't be subject to #corporate or #special_interest or #trademark lobby #capture, where they could likely see their blood, sweat, and tears released as #closed_source #proprietary products, until such time as we do re-license under a Copyleft license.

I hope that helps! 🙂

#tallship

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