Eusebius: Yes, but unintentional. This should be fixed now. - river.

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).

On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 9:38 PM, Martin Peeks <martinp23(a)googlemail.com> wrote: 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. 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.

Well I would think that we would be able to have them "opt-in" to the free licence in the same way that wikimedia does (you agree to it when you signup/submit something). We would just be giving them the opportunity to opt-out of that and still use the service. I would tend to agree with having an opt-out function, mostly for legitimate concerns like Pathoschilds. James James Alexander james.alexander(a)rochester.edu jamesofur(a)gmail.com 100 gmail invites and no one to give them to :( let me know if you want one :) On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 9:53 PM, Martin Peeks <martinp23(a)googlemail.com> wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Martin Peeks wrote: Not really, it's easy to tell what's being used or not from access logs, see if link to source is provided anywhere and if it's there, ok, if not, deluser. Takes all of two minutes. Make it easier by requiring that tools provide a link to their source available somewhere online.

Martin Peeks wrote: I still dont see why you feel it's morally wrong to say that "If you want to use our servers, it's required to use an open source license so that if get ran over, have a heart attack, or just get tired of running it, other people can take over your code so that the community can continue to rely on it."

On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 10:05 PM, Daniel Schwen &lt;lists(a)schwen.de&gt; wrote: Synchbot does not violate the terms of service in any way. It neither requests nor collects user credentials; users provide temporary access directly to me, knowing the risks of doing so. The Toolserver is simply the platform for providing this service, which you can read about at < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pathoschild/Scripts/Synchbot The license indicates what freedoms the author intends for his tools. It makes no sense to license a tool for redistribution if you don't want it redistributed. Trust between Toolserver users is irrelevant here, since home directories are not world-readable. -- Yours cordially, Jesse (Pathoschild)

Of course we have. When a user obtains an account on the toolserver he effectively enters contract with Wikimedia Deutschland. Of course licensing can be tied to that. How can you suggest otherwise?! This is _completely_ besides the point. Please do not make this a heise-forum-style idiology debate. There are purely pragmatic reasons for free licensing here: 1) avoiding dying tools when maintainers leave. 2) fostering synergies through code sharing Of course you can take the stance to say "just write the tool again". What a waste of time! Developer resources should be values higher than this.

Martin Peeks: We can require that all users use a free license for their tools, make this clear to them at account request time, and if they fail to do so, they are simply breaking the rules, which we already have a policy to deal with. (And no, it's not as simple as "just userdel".) The issue here is nothing to do with whether the software is good or not. No one is suggesting that tools will somehow become much better because they're open source, and (unless I missed it) no one is suggesting that tools should be open source for ideological reasons, only for pragmatic reasons. The issue is that when users leave, and their tools have no free license, those tools go away and cannot be revived. So, we need to balance freedom for users with the ability to transfer ownership of tools after the owner leaves. With that in mind, there are three options: * Do nothing. * Require all tools to be open source * Require all tools to be multi-maintainer projects, and further require that MMTs must be open source. If we do anything other than "do nothing", the downside is that all users who are unwilling to open source their tools will leave. While that's not a problem in itself, it means any such tools might no longer be available (if the owner can't find other hosting), or might only work in a reduced form without database access. This is clearly detrimental to Wikimedia projects, so it's something we want to avoid. The downside of staying with "do nothing" is that all non-open-source tools will no longer be available once the owner leaves. This is an active and ongoing problem that leaves many useful tools inaccessible or broken. Now, while I haven't done any actual research on this, it seems quite likely to me that the number of tools we would lose from requiring open source is much lower than the number we currently lose from inactive maintainers. Given that we can't have both options, it's clear that requiring open source is the better one. The actual details of how to do this is a separate discussion and not relevant to this issue... but fear not, I will definitely not support a policy that requires a viral license like the GPL for tools. It seems unlikely to me that Zeus will go out of business in the near future. On the other hand, users go "out of business" all the time, leaving their widely-used, unlicensed tools broken and unmaintainable. So, leaving aside ideological reasons (which I have no time for), there is very little reason to change from ZWS, but a very good reason to require freely licensed tools. - river.

Petr Kadlec: This is only the case if they actually derive the third-party code. Just linking to it is fine (possibly not for GPL, but for more reasonable licenses). (There are also open source licenses that allow licensed code to be mixed with non-free code in the same executable, as long as it's not in the same file.) Even so, if the tool is using the library in the first place, it should be possible to construct a license that allows distribution and modification, even if it's not a fully free license. The only time this isn't possible is if the code were licensed to only a single person, which I imagine should be quite unlikely. (Example: a tool using code that only allows non-commercial use cannot be open source, but it can still be licensed in a way that allows it to be shared amongst Toolserver and other users.) - river.

On 05.02.2010, 18:39 James wrote: As the matter of fact, both Toolserver AND Wikimedia cluster already use non-free software. Using an ideologically correct technology is a good thing, but some also believe that using a functional technology is good too. -- Best regards, Max Semenik ([[User:MaxSem]])

On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 9:53 PM, Martin Peeks &lt;martinp23(a)googlemail.com&gt; wrote: We have the right to require anything we like of people who use our hardware. WMDE is under no obligation, moral or otherwise IMO, to permit people to use their resources in ways they don't think are best for the toolserver. On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 10:39 AM, James Forrester &lt;james(a)jdforrester.org&gt; wrote: This rule is not applicable to the toolserver, which indeed runs mostly on proprietary software. I personally wish it were applicable, but it's not and never has been. On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 9:49 AM, DaB. &lt;WP(a)daniel.baur4.info&gt; wrote: "The source code of every tool is licensed under a free (like BSD) or GPL-compatible[1] license by default" I don't think this is clear, or legally enforceable. I'm pretty sure you have to give a specific license, e.g., "GPLv3 or later", or "MIT license". You can't agree to license your code under an unspecified free license. "Source code is exempted from this if it is explicitly licensed. A tool's license can be explicitly licensed in a comment at the top of its source code, or visibly in its user interface." Maybe you should also allow users to create ~/LICENSE or something that gives a default license for all their tools. Also, something I'm not clear on: "To keep with the successful spirit of free licensing for all Wikimedia projects, the tools on the Toolserver are also freely licensed. . . . Source code is exempted from this if it is explicitly licensed." The second sentence suggests that the code can be explicitly licensed as "Proprietary, all rights reserved", while the first sentence suggests the opposite.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 10-02-04 12:24 PM, River Tarnell wrote: We could require that users freely license their code - then you would know at least that the four freedoms apply and redistributing it wouldn't be so hairy. But of course, one is supposed to know precisely /which/ free license is used... - -Mike

On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 1:46 PM, Mike.lifeguard &lt;mike.lifeguard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I don't think this is a good idea. Most of my tools are freely licensed and open-source, as you can see in the footer at <http://toolserver.org/~pathoschild/stalktoy/>, but there are a few tools I do not want to publish the source code for. Synchbot is a good example; it registers an account on every wiki in two minutes (faster with changes), which I wouldn't want in the hands of our crosswiki attack username vandals. It's fine to recommend free licensing and open source, but we should have the option not to for such cases. -- Yours cordially, Jesse (Pathoschild)

Well ... imho, the only safe way to handle such issues is to check whether there is an open sourced license clause in the source code. Only then you can safely use code after an account is expired. I consider all my work as published under GPLv3, although not everywhere I included the license clause (I should definitely make work of it). Regards Annabel ----- Original Message ---- From: Mike.lifeguard &lt;mike.lifeguard(a)gmail.com&gt; To: toolserver-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thu, February 4, 2010 8:14:09 PM Subject: Re: [Toolserver-l] Changes to expired accounts web hosting -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 10-02-04 03:07 PM, Jesse (Pathoschild) wrote: I didn't think you ran that from the toolserver, since that bot requires the user's login data. Regardless, keep in mind that even if the code is freely licensed, there is no requirement for you to distribute it. Simply don't publish the code. But now we get into questions of how to know which code should be published and which shouldn't be if the author is gone... Do we simply assume it can be redistributed safely unless there's a note in the header? I have a headache, I leave the pondering on this to others - -Mike _______________________________________________ Toolserver-l mailing list (Toolserver-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org) https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/toolserver-l Posting guidelines for this list: https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Mailing_list_etiquette

Hello At Thursday 04 February 2010 21:29:52 DaB. wrote: I requested such a policy (with a draft (even a english one)) more then 6 months ago. Maybe now if some important tools will vanish, WM-DE will start to think about it. Added Tim who is responsible for technical-questions. Sincerly, DaB. -- wp-blog.de

River Tarnell wrote: He must have reenabled it. *goes to bug him*