I think continuing the license discussion is worthwhile.
For the purpose of this conversation as I see it the WikiMedia Foundation is providing services (defined next) to two facets of the MediaWiki community (core and extensions developers): a) Repository to store/revision code (svn or soon git) b) Code review mechanism with community as participants (more for core but usable by extensions) c) Permissive environment where the community can help the community (commit in on each other's code) d) Continuous integration testing (again more for core... is this usable by extensions somehow?) e) Packaging for both core and extensions with backwards-compatibility helpers (this is huge for extensions)
This is great and I hope WMF keeps providing these resources, not just to core but also all extensions developers who would benefit. Given that WMF is providing it, they are setting some requirements about how and in what situations it can be used, as well as vetting who can use it. As long as the requirements are not too strict, this seems reasonable and doesn't devalue the service in the first place (and in turn harm MediaWiki).
The current attitude by the MediaWik communityi as a whole to anyone walking in on IRC (you have code? commit ASAP!), these lists (see the message a few days ago -- just get commit access its easier if you check these changes in yourself), and the wiki access pages themselves (as long as you're a competent programmer, we'll take you).
Given these factors I think it's important to be as permissive as possible in terms of licensing to allow the widest range of contributors, while still enforcing a minimum standard that ensure the community benefits as well from people using the services.
As you mentioned below, changing someone's license on their extension, while sometimes legal, is definitely a no go. In my mind at that point you're forking their project, and saying "well now you can contribute to my fork if you like"... I don't expect such a stipulation to be contested much.
Olivier, I'm sorry your access request didn't go the way you hoped,
To be clear, I had spent the last 7 weeks "justifying" my request with no feedback. It's not about a yes/no. But more on that in another thread, this is about licensing issues neh?
but this issue alone is enough to torpedo your access request.
It shouldn't torpedo anything. As the community grows you will encounter people wanting to use their own licenses on their own code in their own modules more and more. Having a strict requirement to use what I dare call community services is harmful to MediaWiki.
To make it clear, copyright assignments (what I had in my original request) are common in the FOSS community, as you pointed out you talked about them yourself on your blog and wmf talked about having one for MediaWiki at one time. They are most common and beneficial for GPL'ed projects that wish to dual-license. So here's question #1, which you seem to have given your stance on, and leveraged WMF behind.
Q1. Should WMF allow Dual-Licensed extensions in the MediaWiki repo?
Is community consensus even worth gathering, or is this a "closed issue"? If you look at a community like Wordpress, there is a lot of commercial players involved in their plugin ecosystem. Of course they can always host and make their own tools, but does turning them away from community incentives to come to MediaWiki the right choice?
Q2. Should people using any OSI approved license without modification be able to use the MediaWiki repo?
You mentioned in your mail GPL v2, BSD, MIT, LGPL (and similar) but excluded mentioned a soft exclusion for GPL v3. This seems overly restrictive for extensions. As some people mentioned on the lists already, maybe just blanket approving anything OSI approved seems wise? If you can legally fork it, it seems like that should be enough, the community will always be able to benefit from that code. If having the code be compatible with core licensing (so that you can fold code in) is important, then any GPL-compatible license may work.
Q3. Should people who add a clause to their license that all contributions are to be made under the same license be turned away?
This is similar to how the GPL comes with a clause that requires all contributions to be GPL'ed (except with the distribution requirement, so is still more commercial friendly). If someone adds a similar clause to their license (say a BSD license), can they still make use of the services? Of course given Q2 there is the issue of whether such a clause invalidates GPL-compliance, or how it could be worded so as not to.
And here's where I currently stand with my own work. I'm no expert on licensing and my wording so far may not be great, but there seems to be some concern in BSD-like licenses that without such a clause in a shared-commit environment can lead to trouble. Zend Framework is BSD-3-Clause'd and has a contributor agreement to handle IP issues (and not for any dual-licensing goals).
I discussed this particular case with you in IRC, but it didn't seem to me we were able to conclusively decide if such a clause is warranted or not (merely that you do not support it). You've encouraged me to bring this question of if it's even needed to the OSI license-discuss, and I've submitted a message there, hopefully it gets approved for discussion soon and we can have further clarification. For my own extension I'll likely take their recommendation.
We can have a debate right here in this thread about whether this is the right policy to have,
I think in the long run a clearer license policy for the repo is a good thing, if nothing but to make sure people don't waste their time trying to apply.