Re: upstart: please update to latest upstream version

[Sune Vuorela <nospam@vuorela.dk>]

On 2012-02-25, Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> wrote:
> Of the others, I've never got the impression that they're actively
> soliciting contributions from outside the company, though I could be
> wrong.  I think free software developers rarely quibble over licences if

Qt is now actively trying to get contributions from outside the company.
And is getting quite many contributions.

Qt has worked quite a bit to get their CLA acceptable to the community.

 - for example, at the desktop summit where the CLA was brand new, KDE
   developers was actually discouraged from signing it at that time
   because there was too much wrong with it. It got fixed, and the same
   people said in october that they weren't discouraging the CLA any
   longer (and it now was up to the individual wether or not they like
   the concepts of CLA's to sign it)

And to explain why the CLA is needed.
 - Qt has already commercial customers and obligations they need to
   fulfil (mostly from before going LGPL and before trying to get
   contributions from outside)
 - Qt also has obligations to the KDE Free Qt foundation that they need
   to be able to fulfil, should that day come

Qt also has a 'stop gap' from going completely rogue, the KDE Free Qt
Foundation, who can relicense Qt into a very liberal BSD license.

> So, why do people pick on Canonical?  Partly, I think, as a reaction to
> Mark Shuttleworth's repeated arguing for copyright assignment/CLA/
> Harmony.  Partly because Canonical often presents Ubuntu and related
> software as being community projects while this licencing approach can
> be seen to undermine that.

And partly because they haven't made it clear why they need the
copyright assignment.

And partly because amongst people who has read canonicals copyright
assignments, they are part of the more evil of the copyright
assignments.


Rather than signing a copyright assignment, I_would prefer just license
my code going into such projects under MIT/X11. That's less paperwork,
and effectively gives enough rights for the receiver to commercialize on
it.


I have - with a checkbox - signed the Qt CLA and contributed two small
fixes. I haven't yet stood in the actual situation of trying to
contribute code to one of Canonical's projects. Some of my friends have,
and refused the canonical copyright assignments. Their work is now
carried as distribution patches in ubuntu.

/Sune