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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
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 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?