On 5 February 2010 02:45, Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+wikilist(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 9:38 PM, Martin Peeks
<martinp23(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
However, I feel that toolserver users should
retain the *freedom* to
choose how to license projects. Perhaps the docs and so on ought to be
adjusted to emphasise the importance and value of free licensing, but
there should be no automatic compulsion by dint of ToS to give certain
freedoms to one's work. While I, certainly, would open source any
further Wikimedia related tools I were to write, I strongly feel this
should be a matter of personal preference.
At a minimum, though, this should be opt-out, just for pragmatic
reasons. The problem isn't that TS users don't want to freely license
their tools, it's that they vanish and we don't have the opportunity
to ask them. If we said "All your tools are GPLv3 or later, unless
you specifically say otherwise", then most tools would end up being
freely-licensed, and when someone disappears, someone else could take
over the tool.
The default copyright stance, unless a licence specifies otherwise, is
"All Rights Reserved". I don't think we have the right to enforce a
licence that is all about freedom unless a user opts-in.
I wouldn't have any problem at all with saying
that if you want to
write closed-source software related to Wikimedia, you can do it on
your own dime and not using Wikimedia-DE's hardware, software, or
administration budget. But it's not my decision to make, of course.
Closed source software can be as good as open source software - do
remember that. And closed source software doesn't have to be
commercial. While (imo) WM-DE should support free and open source
software, this can be done in other ways. For example, by using a free
and open source webserver rather than the current Zeus (which is to my
knowledge closed-source - at least I cannot find source on their
site).
To me, this is all about freedoms - that's all.
Martin