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Evolution Bounty Stirs GPL Concerns

Posted by timothy on from the do-the-clauses-align dept.

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.

2 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. GPL Fanboys? by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 1, Troll
    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.

    Not everyone here or in the OSS "movement" is a GPL fanboy. So like the BSD lic.

    --
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  2. BSD license by n0dez · · Score: 0, Troll

    I think that in this case (and in many others) the BSDL fits better than the GPL.