[Mediawiki-l] Please convince me to make my software open source

[Ryan Lane]

> Boris. Thanks. That is indeed a good argument.  But then I must be able
> to show that my expertise is indeed my expertise. My company is
> Wikiation. The bundle extensions is named Wikibox Blue. The copyright is
> and should stay mine!. That is. It can be GPL or an other Open Source
> license what I chose. If I should loose that then I should loose
> everything. I lost exclusive ownership of the software and I loose to
> demonstrate my expertise.
>

Notice that you still hold the copyright on your extension whether you
GPL it or not. Any changes made by third parties will need to stay
GPL, but your original source, and any modifications are still owned
by you. You can never un-GPL the software that is already released,
but you can re-close your own source, and keep any new changes
proprietary. You can ensure that your source never becomes polluted by
keeping two separate branches of your code, one which is GPL, and the
other that is proprietary. If you ever decide to re-close your source,
your proprietary branch is safe.

Respectfully,

Ryan Lane