Re: [gst-devel] Re: Helix Player virtual team meeting
- From: Rob Lanphier <robla real com>
- To: David Schleef <ds schleef org>
- Cc: Thomas Vander Stichele <thomas apestaart org>, gnome-multimedia gnome org, desktop-devel-list gnome org, gstreamer-devel lists sf net, licensing open helixcommunity org
- Subject: Re: [gst-devel] Re: Helix Player virtual team meeting
- Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 17:25:24 -0800
Hi David,
Comments inline...
On Wed, 2003-12-10 at 13:48, David Schleef wrote:
> There appears to be a bit of confusion about what is being discussed.
> There are two licenses, the RPSL[1] and RCSL[2], and also the "Terms
> of Use"[3] (which I assume is also similar to the membership agreement,
> which I apparently am not allowed to see without giving out a valid
> email address).
> [1] https://www.helixcommunity.org/content/rpsl
> [2] https://www.helixcommunity.org/content/rcsl
> [3] https://www.helixcommunity.org/nonav/docs/TermsOfUse.html
You've cited the correct URLs to all three, which everyone has access to
anonymously. What are you referring to when you refer to the
"membership agreement"?
> The RPSL, which covers much of the non-codec parts of Helix, does not
> contain anything about copyright assignment, and is very likely to be
> an open source license.
>
> Note that the OSI has incorrectly accepted a few licenses in the past,
> so merely being accepted by OSI is not an indication that it's an
> acceptable license. It does, however, significantly raise the bar for
> which people whose comments you bother listening to. There aren't very
> many people who can credibly argue why a copyright assignment
> requirement in a license is unacceptable (it's not _specifically_
> forbidden by the OSD), whereas a policy of copyright assignment for
> a project is OK. The GNU project has a long-standing tradition of
> requiring copyright assignment for contributions to GNU code, but
> obviously does not require it as part of the license.
>
> Copyright assignment has been primarily rejected ouside of GNU itself,
> as can be seen by the many sucessful projects that don't do it, and
> also the conversion of the Mozilla project away from it. I imagine
> that this is because only the FSF has built up enough trust that
> people believe it will not attempt to "steal" the code and take it
> proprietary.
Are you sure that Mozilla is converting away from it:
http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/form.html
The URL above indicates that they continue to require this.
> I strongly encourage Helix to reconsider it's copyright assignment
> policy. It may be useful in the case of relicensing difficulties,
> but what does it matter if you can't build a community around it
> because nobody will contribute?
Actually, we do have a community around our current license. We've
created a situation where companies who might otherwise take more
liberally-licensed open source software and incorporate it into their
proprietary products are instead working with us in the community. Take
a look at the many announcements we've had in the past year:
https://www.helixcommunity.org/content/news
We're trying to build a bigger community. However, we can't assume that
being more liberal naturally will lead to a bigger community.
> By the way, copyright assignment is one of the reasons I don't
> contribute to GNU projects.
I can see why you wouldn't want to give up your own right/title/etc.
But are you saying that you wouldn't do a joint contributor agreement,
like this?
https://www.helixcommunity.org/2002/intro/contributor-agreement.pdf
Rob
--
Rob Lanphier, Helix Community Coordinator - RealNetworks
http://helixcommunity.org http://rtsp.org http://realnetworks.com
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