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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.
Hopefully it will integrate with KDE a little better. Little things like sound would be nice - or being able to configure it without having to fire up Gnome Control Centre.
It's probably never going to happen, because Evolution is Gnome through and through, but it would be nice to be able to run it without all those Gnome libraries eating up memory. The performance hit since upgrading to SuSE 9.1 has been really noticeable.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
OpenOffice.org addressed this via a joint copyright assignment. In fact, IIRC, they started with a copyright assignment akin to Novell/Ximian's, but then eventually decided to do a joint copyright assignment in the interest of spurring more contributions.
IANAL, NDIPOOTV (Nor Do I Play One On TV), but a joint copyright assignment means that the original author retains all their original rights, and can license their code however they wish, but that the other signatory (in the case of Oo.org, Sun) also can license it how they choose.
The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development
Once you release code under the GPL or the GPL liscence it automaticly becomes from for ever and ever.
Even if the original guys close all their FTP sites and forbids people from spreading the code, you will still have GPL code sitting on people's computers and in their backups that is still perfectly legal to use.
GPL is like a genie in the bottle. Once you let the code out in the wild, it'll stay there and there is nothing you can do about it. You can always put the stopper back in and stop more contributions from yourself but what is out there is out there and you have no control over it.
That's why, although distastefull, most programmers don't mind letting projects take over their copyrights to contributed code. As long as it's under a BSD or GPL type liscense they can the greater code with no strings attatched.
Remember:
Copyright != Liscense.
For instance part of the SCO debacle is that Novell sezs that they gave SCO a liscence to distribute the code and use the copyrighted terms, but did not transfer ownership over to them.
I think the big difference in the debate is that up until now the core Gnome apps haven't had such policies and people are worried about them getting everywhere.
From day one mysql and open office have had clear policies about how they work. Their communities are built of people who accepted that when they joined while the people who didnt went elsewhere
In the Gnome case it is making a change later on than the beginning, which makes it more divisive although the thread is probsbly larger and more acrimonious than its importance in the big picture actually is 8)
But despite the fact that I don't see the similarity, it didn't matter because as Brian Behlendorf said,
And now that three years have passed since Jan. 2001, that non-profit which I can assign joint assignment of copyright to... still does not exist. AFTER *3* (THREE) **YEARS**?!?! Hello! Brian Behlendorf? Is Sun in any rush to create this non-profit? Do you even have an ETA yet?
So... why is it we are so conserned with Novell now? I'm sure they will also assign copyright control over to a non-profit... about as quickly as Sun does for OpenOffice. Until then, we should all sign our hard work over to corps. via joint assignment agreements. After all, Sun/Novell are "similar" to the FSF. It isn't like corp. type people like Brian Behlendorf would ever lie. If they say that a non-profit will be formed soon to address any conserns then I'm sure that is what will happen.
Wait a second... it has been THREE YEARS?! I have been lied too! Anyone think it is time to tackle the Sun issue first? Maybe we should address where Sun is going with their "supposed" non-profit before attacking Novell for following the same model. At least from my expierence with Novell, they will be more responsive than taking three years. But from my expierence, I can't say the same for Sun.
But this is a reason to not make Evolution an integral part of Gnome.
Sorry, but that is complete and utter bullshit.
So what if Novell holds the copyrights? What difference does that make with the typical scenario of a private individual holding the copyrights? As long as it is made available to the GNOME project under a suitable Free Software license, what difference does it make who holds the copyright?
So effectively you are granting Novell the ability to you your code in a propritery way, but the rest of the world see's it as GPL'd. It's basically a way for Novell to avoid inserting GPL'd code into their comercial apps without GPLing them? If that's the case I'd imagine that it is going bother a few developers. I'm no RMS by any strech of the imagination, and this bothers me. I don't think you will get quite the developer response that you've gotten in the past. On the flipside though, I guess I can see any response as better than what Novell has gotten in the past. For them any free code is good. This still seems a little goofy to put on a pure GNOME thing. If I don't take the cash, can I contribute without ever transferiing my copyright?
Novell, on the other hand, was until recently a completely proprietary software company. It would seem more likely that they might be tempted to use contributed Evolution code in proprietary products. If you can't stand that idea, don't contribute to Evolution. But consider: if you found and fixed a bug in XFree86 (or Xorg) would you be willing to send it in along with an assignment? Remember, that code is non-copylefted, so you might become an unpaid employee of some proprietary company that uses the code. And if you do use Evolution, and you were motivated enough to fix an Evolution bug, why wouldn't you want to send it in? Would you want to create a fork, just to deny Novell the ability to use that patch in proprietary software? It would seem that unless you refuse to send patches to fix non-copylefted software either, you're being inconsistent. Even RMS advocates cooperating with non-copylefted free software projects and not trying to create GPL forks.
A hell of a lot of people have written free software that I use every day while on the Red Hat payroll. I'm fine with Red Hat making enough money to keep these folks working and fed. All things being equal, I'd prefer for the FSF to own the copyright over Red Hat, but I'm not particularly worried about the issue.
No form of greed or self-interest? Surely you must be kidding! Selling a proprietary product is not the only form of greed / self-interest.
RMS and the GPL are certainly driven by self-interest---interest in maximizing the volume of software available to them in source form. RMS doesn't care that you have access to his source. He wants access to yours.
I realise that I'm not an expert at these kind of contracts, but the fact that I receive back a right to USE the works, doesn't sound to me like I could give others a license to distribute this code freely or under any specific license I choose. If that is truly the case, then how about you change the license to 'developer hereby grants a license to use to Ximian'?
From GNU page about the GPL
That doesn't seem like surrendering your copyright to GNU...
If you were referring to the restrictions placed on the distribution of code you add to a GPL project, if you don't like them start your own project and license it the way you like, period.
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