From: Alex B. <boi...@in...> - 2006-01-13 18:28:34
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I have several points to make regarding this: 1) I agree that signing a contributor license agreement is a barrier. 2) To alleviate the need for a general contributor license agreement, I have seen projects like Axis2 provide a per-patch, or per-contribution agreement which bounds the scope of the contributor. This is most of the time much easier to sign-off because you know exactly what you are transferring and when. In their case, Axis2 use a plugin that hooks into Jira and you have to sign-off on all code attachment submissions. 3) Using a generally accepted license can help grow the community because it's easier for users to "consume" the product. I won't go into details but IBM came to me last year to embed JDBM in one of their product and the process was very complicated because of our non-standard license and the lack of contributor agreement. 4) If companies like IBM, BEA, Iona, Oracle, Vodaphone, Reed Elsevier, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP, Novell, ... have all signed contributor agreements then it means it's feasible ;) alex Thompson, Bryan B. wrote: > Alex, > > I am happy enough with either of the existing licenses (jdbm/lgpl) or > equally > with Apache, BSD, etc. However, while I understand that explicit agreements > may be stronger, they may also pose insurmountable burdens for people > participating at large companies. There is a very real difference between > a standing policy which permits contributions to open source project under > appropriate circumstances and getting a VP of a large company and its legal > department to sign off on an explicit agreement. > > -bryan > > -----Original Message----- > From: Alex Boisvert [mailto:boi...@in...] > Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 12:12 PM > To: Thompson, Bryan B. > Cc: JDBM Developer listserv > Subject: Re: [Jdbm-developer] jdbm 2.x - license clarification > > > > Yes, in fact what I would like to do is migrate to the Apache 2.x > license and have contributors sign some form of agreement to the license. > > I can dig up the list of contributors and start this process. It may > take some time but eventually this would be the best form of > clarification on the licensing side. > > Is anybody opposed to switching to the Apache license? I will follow-up > individually but let's have a public debate if there are strong feelings. > > alex > > Thompson, Bryan B. wrote: >> Alex, >> >> It would be nice if we could clear up the confusion in the source >> files >> between the jdbm and the lgpl >> licences. It appears that the lgpl license files may have originated >> with the earlier db project. I have >> not survey the source files extensively to figure that out. >> >> -bryan -- Alex Boisvert, Product Development Director Intalio, Inc. | www.intalio.com boi...@in... |