Re: Bug#727708: tech-ctte: Decide which init system to default to in Debian.

[Kevin Chadwick <ma1l1ists@yahoo.co.uk>]

previously on this list Ben Hutchings contributed:

> > > In other words, Canonical gets the right to take a free software
> > > contribution and make it proprietary. The contributors gets to own the
> > > software, and can continue releasing it as free software, but can't
> > > prevent Canonical from making non-free versions of it. I don't find
> > > that an acceptable situation.  
> > 
> > But I saw today that this paragraph goes on with:
> > 
> >     As a condition on the exercise of this right, We agree to also
> >     license the Contribution under the terms of the license or
> >     licenses which We are using for the Material on the Submission
> >     Date.
> > 
> > My understanding (as a non-expert on legalese en_*) is, that Canonical
> > would only be allowed to re-license the Contribution under a
> > dual-license scheme, with (a) the original license, and (b)
> > $whatever-they-want.  
> [...]
> 
> Yes, but that says nothing about the rest of the program that it's a
> part of, nor that they will continue to distribute the Contribution.
> Since the contributor, retaining copyright, can give that license to
> anyone anyway, this condition doesn't appear to have any meaningful
> effect.
> 
> Ben.

I don't see why this should affect the decision at all personally
especially far less than less co-operative upstreams though perhaps a
pure BSD license could be seen as a free-er plus point.

It basically means they have reserved the right that they may never
use but put in jut in case likely for other projects to stop
contributing or publishing the source of their work to the project but
continue to use the communities past work.

The community could even then decide that just canonical was not
allowed to use any of their changes from then on whilst still
benefiting from Canonical's past work.

At the end of the day whatever increases the chance of code being done
for good reasons and the good of the community is what is important
and forcing publication may?? help twist the arms of the less important
contributors but also hinders that likelihood in reduced initial
take up anyway possibly including partial release.

Apache's BSD based and Googles BSD based licenses and many others would
all allow this, what has been and is going to be contributed in a
constructive and forth coming way for the good of all is what is
important.


-- 
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'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work
together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a
universal interface'

(Doug McIlroy)

In Other Words - Don't design like polkit or systemd
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