[jdev] Re: ejabberd vs. Wildfire

[Tijl Houtbeckers]

On Sun, 22 Jan 2006 18:56:17 +0100, Alexander Gnauck  
<gnauck at ag-software.de> wrote:

> Florian Holzhauer schrieb:
>
>> Yes, I understand the reason of the mentioned pdf, and I understand why  
>> it has to be there. But it still sounds to me a bit like "you code for  
>> free, we earn money with your work". And I really dont like that one.  
>> Feel free to flame me for that.
>
> if you contribute to GNU software you have to sign similar papers. I  
> think there is nothing wrong with that, and its very important for OS  
> projects.

That's silly. This document you have to sign has nothing to do with GPLed  
software in general. What it does, is give Jive Software the right to  
relicense your work under their terms. Including ones charging a lot of  
money for it. Normally, only you yourself (as the copyright holder) has  
that right, and that right is untouched by any of the aspects of the GPL.

Florian is right when he feels that the only purpose of signing that  
document is so that Jive can make money from it under a non-GPL license.

And Matt is wrong when he says this is to ensure that the code will "stay  
GPL". You don't have to send papers to Jive for that, just put your  
copyright in the source and add the GPL license, that's all! It's also  
unfair to compare it to the Apache Individual Contributor License  
Agreement, because they are bound by the Apache Software Foundation bylaws  
in what they can do with your contribution, and this includes an explicit  
limitation to nonprofit usage. (Basically it limits them to licensing your  
work under the current or any future Apache Software License). The only  
thing that limits what Jive can do with it is that you still (also) have  
copyright on the code, and their imagination.

However Jive has every right to require you to sign such a document before  
they put it in their build. Just as you are free *not* to sign it, and  
make your own builds of WildFire with your code included. Whether you  
think it's the right thing to do for Jive and for Wildfire or not is up to  
you. If you think it's better to use a jabber server from a  
(developer)community that is open for everyone, then that's a fair  
consideration right? I can imagine some people not being happy with one  
company controlling the WildFire community, and requiring people to  
license their work to Jive software at no cost to be a part of it. Then  
again some might think that since Jive puts money and manpower into the  
project, it's a fair trade.

It is however, not "standard" in open source development, in fact it's  
mostly unheard of unless a company started the opensource project (as is  
the case with Jive) but even then it's by no means garantueed that such a  
construction will be used.

There are several ways to look at this... Personally I find it discourages  
people to contribute. I'm not some kind of information-wants-to-be-free  
GPL-zealot, but I don't see why only Jive should reap the benifits from  
more liberal licensing terms, and not everyone. eg. why not go for a BSD  
style license? I have no doubts when contributing to a project with that  
type of license.