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Evolution Bounty Stirs GPL Concerns
Moochman writes "The recent Desktop Integration Bounty (funded by Novell) will surely please people who want Evolution to be part of GNOME. But the Ximian Evolution copyright assignment has stirred up concerns in the community about whether contributors will be able to maintain their Free Software mores. Essentially, contributors to Evolution must give Novell copyright over any code they submit; then Novell is allowed to include this code in a proprietary product. Is this a smart business move, or a violation of the GPL?" Since all contributions are only at the request of the contributing coder, and considering that the copyright assignment form says that "Ximian agrees to grant back to Developer, and does hereby grant, nonexclusive, royaltyfree and noncancelable rights to use the Works," and specifies that Novell/Ximian release the code under a license compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (such as the GPL), it seems to protect the contributors rather well.
Another big one is GNU.
Notice that copyright assignment to Evolution has
been the rule since its beginning, there is nothing
new.
So this is a three to four year old policy.
Miguel.
Before you make comments like this, please read
the copyright assignment form, which clearly
states that Novell agrees to grant back to the
developer all the rights over the code that they
contributed.
So you can effectively do whatever you want with
your code (unless it is a derivative works, in
which case, you are subject to the GPL anyways).
Miguel.
The policy -like stated elsewhere- is one that
Ximian came up with, since the very first launch
of Evolution.
People are just mixing two different things,
because both were discussed this week on the
list.
There is no change in policy, just someone who
freaked out this week because of Sun's rumours,
the freakout evolving into this.
Miguel.