Evolution Bounty Stirs GPL Concerns 214
Moochman writes "The recent Desktop Integration Bounty (funded by Novell) will surely please people who want Evolution to be part of GNOME. But the Ximian Evolution copyright assignment has stirred up concerns in the community about whether contributors will be able to maintain their Free Software mores. Essentially, contributors to Evolution must give Novell copyright over any code they submit; then Novell is allowed to include this code in a proprietary product. Is this a smart business move, or a violation of the GPL?" Since all contributions are only at the request of the contributing coder, and considering that the copyright assignment form says that "Ximian agrees to grant back to Developer, and does hereby grant, nonexclusive, royaltyfree and noncancelable rights to use the Works," and specifies that Novell/Ximian release the code under a license compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (such as the GPL), it seems to protect the contributors rather well.
A no issue. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So..? (Score:5, Informative)
Um... so what? The FSF does this too! (Score:5, Informative)
As I mentioned on the linked page: "Also, the FSF makes all contributors attribute copyrights to the FSF. They do this for legal reasons. Mozilla did not, and when they decided to re-license, they had to contact every contributor. Because of this, we too require that any contributors attribute the copyrights to the jasabe project. Of course, you are still free to fork the project and keep your changes under your copyright, but we cannot accept your changes into the main jasabe tree."
Don't believe me? More info can be found on the FSF page [gnu.org] as well as on their FAQ. [gnu.org]
Not that it matters much for our project. It's only important if you have contributors.
Re:As a regular user of Evolution (Score:3, Informative)
And so, I see a clear picture of a large, pink flamingo, with beautiful plumage, with its head in the sand.
I know, it's a myth - they really don't bury their heads in the sand, but that's not true of humans. People bury their heads in intellectual sand all the time.
Software licenses mirror politics in this respect. If anybody EVER begins to complain about the "damn gubmint" my first question is... "Did you vote?". If the answer is anything but "Of course" then nothing they say has any bearing on anything, and I'm very explicit about telling them so. I simply don't engage in verbal political discussions/debates with people who don't vote since they've already made it clear their voice doesn't matter.
So, people don't pay attention to the actions of our president, and don't think about what's going on, and then are screwed in the end.
And that's exactly what software licenses can do. Unix was very nearly killed by Microsoft because the Unix license encouraged forking and balkanization of an "open" product. They then were no longer interoperable, and development tanked. We nearly lost decades of valuable experience and capabilities!
Microsoft's licenses are even more restrictive... if you use your install CD on two computers, you are engaging in criminal behavior. Microsoft's licenses encourage interoperability (with other MS products) and it's the interoperability that people/developers bought.
GPL provides provisions to mitigate the encouragement to fork present in previous *nix licenses - and quite successfully. It's an acceptable balance between totally closed (the MS way) or totally open (the Unix way).
Given the choice between one extreme and the other, the right answer is almost always somewhere in the middle.
Ownership does matter. When you "Buy" software, you are buying it's functionality and a license to use it. Would you buy a CD Player if you could only use it under conditions you don't find acceptable? What if you bought a car that prohibited you from modifying it in any way, (including dice on the rear-view, or removing seats) and that prohibition was backed with the force of law?
Let's try this post with a different kind of product. What if you didn't "buy" a car, but rather just the right to use said car?
"I think myself, like the majority of people that use cars could give a flying fsck about the title of ownership some car is using."
Doesn't that sound a wee bit different?
Re:That's slightly different (Score:3, Informative)
Bruce Perens explains this problem here [userlinux.com]
"Red Hat has already proposed an answer to this problem, but I think it's the wrong answer. Their Fedora project is obviously intended to look like Debian. But unlike Debian, Fedora is an extremely unequal partnership. "Fedora" is where the community developers are supposed to build Red Hat's product, while the certifications and vendor endorsements are held back for the high-priced "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" brand. This is especially obvious in recent certification announcements: the Common Criteria certification will go to "Red Hat Enterprise Linux", not "Fedora". And of course the entire steering board of the Fedora project are Red Hat employees. Red Hat recently announced a second draft of the leadership structure for Fedora, in which they have eliminated voting, expressing the need to keep control in the hands of Red Hat's management.
How much would I advise a volunteer, community developer to contribute to Fedora? I think it makes sense to make Fedora packages for your own software - that way, you have some assurance that it will be packaged correctly. Beyond that, because of the vastly unequal partnership, I fear that a volunteer developer would be making himself an unpaid employee of Red Hat rather than a member of a real community. I guess that's OK if you think they'll hire you eventually. But I'd advise volunteer developers to concentrate their work on projects where the partnerships are demonstrably equal."
Re:The FSF asks people to sign over copyright also (Score:2, Informative)
Personally I would only sign a copyright assignment when the copyright assignment says the software isn't allowed to be released under a non-free software.
Re:Letter and Spirit of the GPL (Score:5, Informative)
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: Novell (or any other copyright owner for that matter) owns the copyright, which is what allows them to decide which license to release a product under. However, if you obtain a GPLed product from a copyright owner, they have granted you the rights laid out in the GPL, such as the right to freely redistribute, and the right to make modifications (provided said mods are released GPL as well). That license cannot be retroactively cancelled. All that Novell could do is refuse to release all future versions of Evo under the GPL. At which point the GPLed version of Evo would probably fork into a separate project. That's the beauty of GPLed code - once it's out there, it's out there. Doesn't matter if the company producing the code goes belly-up, or decides to stop providing updates, or whatever. The code is still there, and can still be worked with.
Re:Um... so what? The FSF does this too! (Score:3, Informative)
The question is who you trust, either Novell which has a history of making tightly controlled proprietary software, or the FSF which is potentially more trustworthy, at least in my opinion.
I wouldn't want to contribute my copyright because I wouldn't want the license to be changed without my permission, so I wouldn't contribute to something like this, but then I have little to offer it anyway so in this case it's a moot point.
Copyright assignment on Evolution. (Score:5, Informative)
been the rule since its beginning, there is nothing
new.
So this is a three to four year old policy.
Miguel.
Re:And how can I use my 'works' afterwards? (Score:5, Informative)
the copyright assignment form, which clearly
states that Novell agrees to grant back to the
developer all the rights over the code that they
contributed.
So you can effectively do whatever you want with
your code (unless it is a derivative works, in
which case, you are subject to the GPL anyways).
Miguel.
Re:And how can I use my 'works' afterwards? (Score:5, Informative)
Ximian came up with, since the very first launch
of Evolution.
People are just mixing two different things,
because both were discussed this week on the
list.
There is no change in policy, just someone who
freaked out this week because of Sun's rumours,
the freakout evolving into this.
Miguel.
Re:Why I disagree with Bruce (Score:3, Informative)
Now in the above, would you have any intention of accepting something which is strictly GPL and then supporting simultaneously both forks caused by that minor improvement? You could take existing MySQL code under the GPL and improve it. However you'd have to keep maintaining it and try to keep up with MySQL AB. If I did manage to come up with a significant improvement which I was dependent on (Why else would I have gone to the trouble?) after a bit of consideration, I think I would pay MySQL AB to take it. Something's topsy-turvy here.
Re:no form of greed or self-interest (Score:3, Informative)
RMS doesn't care that you have access to his source. He wants access to yours.
What he wants is that everybody should have access to the source. That includes him, but is not restricted to him. I'm not a big fan of RMS, but the way you describe his motives is a bit unfair.
Re:So..? (Score:3, Informative)
No, you can't. In fact the Evolution copyright assignment is an exact copy (with only the names of the organizations changed) of the GNU copyright assignment. The difference is that the FSF is a non-profit organization set up for the express purpose of protecting the freedom of software, while Novell is a company set up for the purpose of returning a profit to its shareholders, so people are more likely to see something sinister in the more loosely worded clauses of the assignment. The intention of the clause in question in the original FSF assignment is to allow MySQL style dual licensing on a case by case basis, should it be advantageous to the aims of the FSF. This is clarified somewhere in the FSF docs, though the clause as worded does require you to put a lot of trust in the FSF not to stray from their current philosophy. In the case of Novell, the clause could conceivably be used to close the source at some date in future, with an enhanced commercial version being offered, similar to what happens with OpenOffice and Mozilla (both of which have licenses which allow third parties to commercially exploit enhanced versions, so it is something the developers know to expect).
Re:So..? (Score:3, Informative)
Irrelevant. The topic is not GPL'ed projects, but projects controlled by GNU. You are confused because the GPL is today more famous than GNU which spawned it.
If you want to get a patch included into an actual GNU project [gnu.org], such as emacs or gcc, you must assign copyright to GNU. Otherwise they'll reject your patch (you're always free to fork, of course, but then don't get the benefit high-profile placement)