Hi everyone,
There's a ton of issues conflated in the SVN Extension access thread. I'm sure there are things we can improve about that process, and I'll talk to the people involved next week about it. I've asked Sumana not to rush out a response on this thread today, and I ask that we table non-license related issues until after Monday.
Now, on to the license issues:
On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 10:32 PM, Olivier Beaton olivier.beaton@gmail.com wrote:
There seems to have been concern with my original license, a BSD-2-Clause with copyright assignment so I don't lose the ability to distribute my code, this isn't the GPL, you need a contributor agreement with BSD (as I understand it).
Olivier, I'm sorry your access request didn't go the way you hoped, but this issue alone is enough to torpedo your access request. I'm generally sympathetic to the desire of commercial entities to have a copyright assignment clause (as I've written about before[1]). However, to the best of my knowledge, Wikimedia Foundation is not about to dive into that thicket, and I'd personally be vehemently opposed to us doing so.
As best I know, we don't have a stated policy for the license conditions for code that is contributed to our source repository, but we probably should. I'll take a stab at the previously unstated policy now: 1. We have a strong preference for "GPL version 2 or later" (more on this in a bit). 2. We generally accept licenses that are compatible with "GPL v2 or greater". BSD 2 and 3 clause, MIT, LGPL, and many other licenses fall into this category. 3. Don't mess with the license headers of code other people wrote without their consent, because: a) even in cases where it's legal (e.g. while it's perfectly legal to slap a GPLv2 header on code that was previously under BSD), it's rude. Don't do it. b) it's frequently not legal. Don't "fix" someone's license if you don't believe it is the proper license under this policy. Revert the code instead. 4. GPLv3 usage is still largely an undecided matter, and we ask that committers not use this license in any GPLv2+ licensed extension or in core. I believe that some extensions may be checked in under this license, but we're avoiding it for WMF-created work, simply because of the one-way nature of the decision to move to it. 5. Anyone can contribute to anyone else's code under the stated license for that code, with no other strings attached.
Don't take the above as gospel...that's just pretty much the set of assumptions I've been operating under, and I suspect it's more-or-less what others are operating under as well. We can have a debate right here in this thread about whether this is the right policy to have, but I'm not faulting anyone for making these assumptions. There may also be extensions that don't adhere to this policy. If there are, we should probably have a discussion about why that is, and what (if anything) we should do about them.
On "GPL version 2 or later", what is meant by that is that the license header explicitly say that the file is licensed as GPL "either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.". Not "choose whatever version of the GPL you want".
Olivier, I'm sorry this wasn't clearly communicated to you until now. If having copyright assignment is a requirement for your extension, I suggest you host your extension elsewhere.
Rob [1] http://blog.robla.net/2010/thoughts-on-dual-licensing-and-contrib-agreements...
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.
On 7 November 2011 15:08, Olivier Beaton olivier.beaton@gmail.com wrote:
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
Copyright assignments are inherently harmful, as their only use is so that the assigned-to body can defect on the implicit covenant of open source: that is, so it can take people's contributions private.
The FSF continues to use them, on the theory that this gives greater legal protection. While the FSF is quite unlikely to defect (it's spent twenty-five years behaving as a consistent actor), its legal theory appears unnecessary (neither the Linux kernel nor BusyBox use copyright assignments, but both have been spectacularly successful in pursuing GPL violations) and its continued use makes people think they're a good idea.
For an example of defection, see Oracle taking MySQL open-core.
Copyright assignments are harmful. They are not some sort of standard thing in open source. They would be harmful to MediaWiki.
- d.
Copyright assignments are harmful. They are not some sort of standard thing in open source. They would be harmful to MediaWiki.
At the risk of de-railing the discussion, I think everyone can agree that having good high quality extensions for MediaWiki is good for MediaWiki. The license an extension uses does not harm MediaWiki in any way. Nor is this discussion really aimed at proposing a re-licensing of the core. Please stay on-topic.
The question is should a WMF-funded service (and the MediaWiki community) allow 3rd party to make use of said services if they have dual-licensed code.
They are already contributing positively to MediaWiki a) they have an extension we can use that better our lives (maybe) and b) they are releasing at least a portion of their code with a permissive license which everyone can benefit from. Whether it be GPL or otherwise. True maybe we could benefit MORE, but it's not harming the core or the community.
- Olivier
On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 8:45 AM, Olivier Beaton olivier.beaton@gmail.com wrote:
The question is should a WMF-funded service (and the MediaWiki community) allow 3rd party to make use of said services if they have dual-licensed code.
Well, in addition to dual-licensing and asking everyone to contribute under a dual-license, you want everyone to make a copyright assignment to you, right?
I'm not sure I understand what benefits this brings -- you imply in your original note that it's required for BSD dual-licensing, but I don't see why that's true. Could you elaborate on that?
Thanks, Erik
On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 1:15 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Could you elaborate on that?
Given that I wasn't using the GPL, I was concerned that anyone committing against my code would do so under "all rights reserved" and would effectively be forking my code from the point of their revision. I wanted to make sure the code stayed under my BSD-2-Clause license.
My first stab at this was to use a contributor agreement that contained a copyright assignment, as people do for dual-licensing with GPL code. A little bit later I found the Zend Framework license, which uses a BSD-3-Clause and a contributor agreement (which forces contributions to give ZF a license to the code in the contribution, not copyright assignment) and I quickly changed to suit. Rob seems to think this may still be unnecessary, and I've sent a mail to the OSI license-discuss mailing to list for clarification on that matter.
But the discussion as I set it out in my previous email with the 3 questions are much more general then my own particular case, and I think the community would benefit from consensus on how applications in each case should be handled in the future.
Q1. Should WMF allow Dual-Licensed extensions in the MediaWiki repo?
Q2. Should people using any OSI approved license without modification be able to use the MediaWiki repo?
Q3. Should people who add a clause to their license that all contributions are to be made under the same license be turned away?
I gave my thoughts one each question in my previous email. My original request would of been answered by a clear stance on Q1. My current code would have a clear answer given Q3. But I doubt I will be the last to try any of the 3.
On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 10:37 AM, Olivier Beaton olivier.beaton@gmail.com wrote:
My first stab at this was to use a contributor agreement that contained a copyright assignment, as people do for dual-licensing with GPL code. A little bit later I found the Zend Framework license, which uses a BSD-3-Clause and a contributor agreement (which forces contributions to give ZF a license to the code in the contribution, not copyright assignment) and I quickly changed to suit. Rob seems to think this may still be unnecessary, and I've sent a mail to the OSI license-discuss mailing to list for clarification on that matter.
Yeah, I think Rob's right on that, but would be interested to see what you find out.
I personally don't philosophically object to having extensions in the repo that require dual-licensing of all future contributions under some set of OSI-approved licenses, without any kind of copyright assignment. But I can see that it might be a pain to maintain such a regime in practice.
Olivier Beaton wrote:
On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 1:15 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Could you elaborate on that?
Given that I wasn't using the GPL, I was concerned that anyone committing against my code would do so under "all rights reserved" and would effectively be forking my code from the point of their revision. I wanted to make sure the code stayed under my BSD-2-Clause license.
Why did you think so?
I'm of the same opinion as bawolff:
My understanding is we allow people to commit extensions under whatever OSI approved license strikes their fancy, and that if you commit to someone else's extension, then you also release your commit under that license. This always struck me as common sense...
If you edit a file with a header "This is under BSD license", and not changing it, or otherwise conflicting with that statement, I consider you're releasing that commit under the BSD license. Now, it would certainly be possible that someone did a commit saying "This is my own copyright, and nobody is allowed to make derivatives of this", but (a) I expect that would be immediatly reverted (what is doing such unfree code on our svn, and further /restricting/ the previous one?) (b) It's silly to commit it to a public repo if you want to keep it for your own.
If someone does a magic improvement to it, it may want to keep its changes for himself and not release them. Note that GPL doesn't prevent that, either (only if there's redistribution). IMHO, such person would do a better job providing it upstream, first as a good netizenship (give back to people which gave you the system), and second because that would allow for being better maintained, and remove the pain of merging each time (so it's also a good thing from an egoistic perspective).
Olivier proposal
My first stab at this was to use a contributor agreement that contained a copyright assignment, as people do for dual-licensing with GPL code. A little bit later I found the Zend Framework license, which uses a BSD-3-Clause and a contributor agreement (which forces contributions to give ZF a license to the code in the contribution, not copyright assignment) and I quickly changed to suit. Rob seems to think this may still be unnecessary, and I've sent a mail to the OSI license-discuss mailing to list for clarification on that matter.
further explained by Tim:
He wanted to have a contributor agreement which required anyone who changed the file in Subversion to assign copyright to him. The content was all under a BSD-style license and anyone could modify it, so the contract would have to have the form "if you agree to assign copyright, I will agree to allow you to commit to this file".
This kind of agreement is quite common in certain circles, but for it to work, the person who you're making the contract with has to be able to restrict write access to the source code repository. Since Olivier wasn't going to be able to restrict commit access himself, and we weren't going to do it for him, the contributor agreement didn't make sense.
I'm not sure if Olivier got confused with licenses, or is it just me who got confused with Olivier reasons. Using a BSD license with an extra same-license clause it's like making CC-BY a CC-BY-SA. You can do it, but then CC-BY isn't the best description / you may have chosen the wrong license. There are some differences, as that wouldn't apply to users but only upstream. I find natural that he wants to keep the extension with the original license, and the sensible thing to do among us is to keep the license chosen by the original author. Moreover, a contribution able to push a license change would need to make a 'substantial' change, or might qualify as PD.
So going through a copyright assignment to the extension author looks like an over-complication to me. Each community has its own ways to do thing. That may be appropiate for a community strict on non-SA free licenses where each module is tightly handled by a owner, but I don't think it would work for us.
But the discussion as I set it out in my previous email with the 3 questions are much more general then my own particular case, and I think the community would benefit from consensus on how applications in each case should be handled in the future.
Q1. Should WMF allow Dual-Licensed extensions in the MediaWiki repo?
Yes.
Q2. Should people using any OSI approved license without modification be able to use the MediaWiki repo?
Yes.
Q3. Should people who add a clause to their license that all contributions are to be made under the same license be turned away?
That's a greyer area due to the "Are extensions linked?" debate, as such license doesn't seem GPL-compatible. Still, it may be better to have it with a license warning than not having it in the repo. Authors of such extensions should be encouraged to dual-license it with a GPL-compatible license.
If instead of a MediaWiki extension, it's an independent piece, that's an emphatic allow.
Olivier Beaton olivier.beaton@gmail.com writes:
Could you elaborate on that?
Given that I wasn't using the GPL, I was concerned that anyone committing against my code would do so under "all rights reserved" and would effectively be forking my code from the point of their revision. I wanted to make sure the code stayed under my BSD-2-Clause license.
I'm pretty confused by this whole situation.
IANAL, but if you add restrictions such that you require modifications to be under the BSD-2-Clause license, then it seems like you have re-invented dual-licensing with the GPL license without any real benefit. If that is the case, I am not in favor of adding yet-another-licensing-scheme to our repository. But I could be swayed, given the right argument.
What is the pragmatic benefit of your proposed license?
Mark.
What do I gain by not using gpl? Commercial use and forking under a license of your choice. The only thing that concerns me using bsd is how to accept contributions that im not merging in safely. Is zend framework concern with bsd and their use of a contrib agreement ?
My employer asked me to make modifications to mw for their use, i chose instead to spend my free time so i can share them with others. I cant use gpl even if i wanted to. On Nov 7, 2011 7:31 PM, "Mark A. Hershberger" mhershberger@wikimedia.org wrote:
Olivier Beaton olivier.beaton@gmail.com writes:
Could you elaborate on that?
Given that I wasn't using the GPL, I was concerned that anyone committing against my code would do so under "all rights reserved" and would effectively be forking my code from the point of their revision. I wanted to make sure the code stayed under my BSD-2-Clause license.
I'm pretty confused by this whole situation.
IANAL, but if you add restrictions such that you require modifications to be under the BSD-2-Clause license, then it seems like you have re-invented dual-licensing with the GPL license without any real benefit. If that is the case, I am not in favor of adding yet-another-licensing-scheme to our repository. But I could be swayed, given the right argument.
What is the pragmatic benefit of your proposed license?
Mark.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Olivier Beaton olivier.beaton@gmail.com writes:
What do I gain by not using gpl? Commercial use and forking under a license of your choice. The only thing that concerns me using bsd is how to accept contributions that im not merging in safely.
Others have said here, and I agree, that if you modify an extension which uses the BSD license, then you are releasing your modifications using the license that the extension is released under.
If you want to make it really clear to people working on the code use a license header. You can see how this is done on a large projects (albeit ones that use only a single license) by looking at Emacs[1] or FreeBSD[2].
Point being: I think you're trying to solve a non-problem. If you're really worried about how to accept contributions and think your situation is truly unique, consult a lawyer. Otherwise, follow the example of others who have gone before you.
Mark.
Footnotes: [1] http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/lisp/ -- every.el file is pre-pended with
;; GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify ;; it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by ;; the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or ;; (at your option) any later version.
[2] http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/ -- every .c file is pre-pended with
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions * are met: * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the * documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
On 08/11/11 02:52, Olivier Beaton wrote:
What do I gain by not using gpl? Commercial use and forking under a license of your choice. The only thing that concerns me using bsd is how to accept contributions that im not merging in safely. Is zend framework concern with bsd and their use of a contrib agreement ?
My employer asked me to make modifications to mw for their use, i chose instead to spend my free time so i can share them with others. I cant use gpl even if i wanted to.
GPL doesn't preclude commercial usage. It requires you give others the ability to give the same (freedom) rights you gave them, but if the extension is going to be published in our svn, that doesn't seem a problem. Depending on your employer, you may be able to develop it in company time releasing the result under a free license (if the collaborative method results in having a better extension, your company will benefit from having the FOSS developers improve it, and reduce the time you'll need to maintain it as a fork).
If it's on company time it's All Rights Reserved and will never see the light of day. Way too many lawyers over here. Anyways it looks for my perticular case I'll probably end up with just a BSD header (was most likely overthinking/overparanoid), but as I keep repeating, and which Rob pointed out, it would be a good thing to a have a documented guideline (based on consensus) about what can be accepted into the repo. Key questions like is-gpl-compatability a must? Not all OSI licenses are IIRC.
On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 12:50 PM, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com wrote:
On 08/11/11 02:52, Olivier Beaton wrote:
What do I gain by not using gpl? Commercial use and forking under a license of your choice. The only thing that concerns me using bsd is how to accept contributions that im not merging in safely. Is zend framework concern with bsd and their use of a contrib agreement ?
My employer asked me to make modifications to mw for their use, i chose instead to spend my free time so i can share them with others. I cant use gpl even if i wanted to.
GPL doesn't preclude commercial usage. It requires you give others the ability to give the same (freedom) rights you gave them, but if the extension is going to be published in our svn, that doesn't seem a problem. Depending on your employer, you may be able to develop it in company time releasing the result under a free license (if the collaborative method results in having a better extension, your company will benefit from having the FOSS developers improve it, and reduce the time you'll need to maintain it as a fork).
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 8 November 2011 18:02, Olivier Beaton olivier.beaton@gmail.com wrote:
If it's on company time it's All Rights Reserved and will never see the light of day. Way too many lawyers over here. Anyways it looks for my perticular case I'll probably end up with just a BSD header (was most likely overthinking/overparanoid), but as I keep repeating, and which Rob pointed out, it would be a good thing to a have a documented guideline (based on consensus) about what can be accepted into the repo. Key questions like is-gpl-compatability a must? Not all OSI licenses are IIRC.
To what degree are extensions derivatives, under copyright law, of MediaWiki code? Enough to have to be GPLed? That's a thorny one.
(WordPress says all WordPress themes are derivatives and must therefore be GPL, for example. There's a thriving cottage industry in selling WordPress themes, but this would mean they wouldn't have much leverage to stop customers then giving them away, even if that's not how copyright technically works.)
- d.
On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 1:08 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
To what degree are extensions derivatives, under copyright law, of MediaWiki code? Enough to have to be GPLed? That's a thorny one.
IIRC, we've discussed this before but never come up with a solid answer. We really do need to figure out the answer to this.
-Chad
To what degree are extensions derivatives, under copyright law, of MediaWiki code?
IANAL, but I'd think that extensions are "derivative" of MediaWiki in the same manner that my email is "derivative" of the English Language Dictionary.
DanB
The FSF's theory of GPL inheritance is based on the idea that your code has only one purpose: to extend the capabilities of GPL'ed code. It has no other use or function. So, to distribute it under any other license is an attempt to create a collective work that violates the GPL. This case is trivially destroyed by creating unit test code which isn't GPL'ed.
On Nov 8, 2011 1:08 PM, "David Gerard" &l
On 8 November 2011 18:02, Olivier Beaton olivier.beaton@gmail.com wrote:
If it's on company time it's All Rights Reserved and will never see the light of day. Way too many lawyers over here. Anyways it looks for my perticular case I'll probably end up with just a BSD header (was most likely overthinking/overparanoid), but as I keep repeating, and which Rob pointed out, it would be a good thing to a have a documented guideline (based on consensus) about what can be accepted into the repo. Key questions like is-gpl-compatability a must? Not all OSI licenses are IIRC.
To what degree are extensions derivatives, under copyright law, of MediaWiki code? Enough to have to be GPLed? That's a thorny one.
(WordPress says all WordPress themes are derivatives and must therefore be GPL, for example. There's a thriving cottage industry in selling WordPress themes, but this would mean they wouldn't have much leverage to stop customers then giving them away, even if that's not how copyright technically works.)
- d.
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On 09/11/11 04:50, Platonides wrote:
On 08/11/11 02:52, Olivier Beaton wrote:
What do I gain by not using gpl? Commercial use and forking under a license of your choice. The only thing that concerns me using bsd is how to accept contributions that im not merging in safely. Is zend framework concern with bsd and their use of a contrib agreement ?
My employer asked me to make modifications to mw for their use, i chose instead to spend my free time so i can share them with others. I cant use gpl even if i wanted to.
GPL doesn't preclude commercial usage. It requires you give others the ability to give the same (freedom) rights you gave them, but if the extension is going to be published in our svn, that doesn't seem a problem. Depending on your employer, you may be able to develop it in company time releasing the result under a free license (if the collaborative method results in having a better extension, your company will benefit from having the FOSS developers improve it, and reduce the time you'll need to maintain it as a fork).
GPL allows commercial usage, but it is seen by some as being anti-commercial, because of the restriction against integration with a closed-source product. That's why many software projects (e.g. PHP) refuse contributions of GPL code.
-- Tim Starling
On 08/11/11 02:08, Olivier Beaton wrote:
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).
My recommendation is that you contact people who commit code to your extension, and request that they agree to license their contributions under a BSD-style license.
If they do not agree to do this, then you can merge their changes out of your fork on olivierbeaton.com. But knowing the MediaWiki community, I doubt that that will ever happen.
Localisation commits may be slightly tricky. At http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Project:About it says
"Derivative works may also be licensed under the licenses of the respective Free and Open Source projects the translations have been or will be added to."
So in principle it will be fine, but if you wanted to obtain an assurance from every individual translator as to whether have truly agreed to that licensing policy, you would be facing a challenge. If worst comes to worst, you can always distribute a pure-BSD fork which is stripped of localisations derived from translatewiki.net.
As I said before, I don't think a normal contributor agreement can be binding, because you don't control access to the repository. I also don't think your browse-wrap style contract will be binding on all contributors. In OTRS you wrote:
/* By comitting against this file you retain copyright for your contributions and grant them to Olivier Finlay Beaton under the same BSD-2-Clause license (attribution). */
You can't make a contract with someone in such a passive way, you have to bring the terms to their attention somehow and extract their active agreement. Also, as with the copyright assignment, there's a lack of consideration. The committer can explicitly refuse to enter the contract and then commit anyway.
That's why I think that if you want to have a pure-BSD extension with solid legal footing, you should drop these headers from your source files and rely on direct email contact with the extension contributors. That would also have the advantage of being less controversial.
-- Tim Starling
On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 10:54 PM, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
My recommendation is that you contact people who commit code to your extension, and request that they agree to license their contributions under a BSD-style license.
That would of course be the (please print out this form, sign it, scan it, then email me a copy) sure-fire way of contribution agreements. However if one hoped to make use of a service like the MW repo, this seems like too much of a hassle and like Rob mentioned, you're then better off just running your own show, elsewhere. And as you mention with translators it becomes near-impossible.
As I said before, I don't think a normal contributor agreement can be binding, because you don't control access to the repository. I also don't think your browse-wrap style contract will be binding on all contributors. In OTRS you wrote:
Agreed, like I mention above, short of getting a signed document, these things aren't legally binding, so the question of it's even worth having comes up pretty strongly. I've sent the question off to OSI license-discuss, I'm hoping they'll approve the message for discussion there so I can get some feedback on what more knowledgeable people think about BSD and contributions from outside sources. They may be able to say what we hope to hear "the BSD header is enough" or what I fear "you need signed contrib agreements" or some middle ground "here's some legal-lawyer speak that project X,Y,Z have used to mitigate this problem".
That's why I think that if you want to have a pure-BSD extension with solid legal footing, you should drop these headers from your source
I hope you don't mean the BSD license, and just meant the pseudo contributor agreement license-amendment I was toying with.
But in the end, my particular situation is just one of 3 that I mentioned could arise, with the other two being much more common. I don't want this discussion to just focus on my particular struggle with how to license my code, but on how MW might deal with more general non GPL-only code. Like say someone wanted to commit using the Microsoft OSI-approved license, or some non-gpl-compatible OSI license. And of course the case of GPL/propriatery dual-licensing arrangements.
Especially given how some people are doing some massive things with extensions (like SMW) I don't see it as unrealistic that this will come up, especially if building a healthy and strong extension developer continues on it's current track.
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