On 4 February 2010 17:14, Daniel Schwen lists@schwen.de wrote:
One solution would be to make free licensing a prerequisite to obtaining a toolserver account. And then make it mandatory to make all source-code world readable (minus config files containing passwords of course).
In my opinion, this is unreasonable.
Firstly, let me say that I support free/open source software and use it heavily.
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.
Also, if a user "vanishes" and their tool becomes unmaintained, the correct course of action unless the code is freely licensed and has been released to the public is, I think, to accept that the tool is gone and write a new one (as a MMT!). Situations where tools become unusable for various reasons highlight the importance of open-sourcing code, but whether or not to license code in such a way should remain a *free choice*.
A possibility, while retaining the freedom to license one's code how one wishes, is that the toolserver could exercise its freedom to tell people "no" when they request accounts, or to close accounts. To do so purely on the basis of the licensing of the code - as long as there isn't evidence that licences upon other code are being breached - strikes me as counter-productive, since tools which are for whatever reason closed-source, could still be immensely useful to the community.
Thanks
Martin