Which License should I pick?

Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M. rdixon at cyberspaces.org
Mon Dec 15 01:00:11 UTC 2003


If, as stated, the basic codebase is not going to be changed or enhanced by
contributions from anyone other than those created by the original copyright
holder, then dual-licensing is clearly possible by using a less restrictive
license.  To be fair, I would announce the fact that the codebase will be
subject to dual-licensing as soon as you go public...that may matter to
potential licensees.  As for copyright transfers, I suppose if this were
followed by most, the SCO-IBM litigation would be less likely than it is.
Demanding an assignment of copyright certainly makes it easier to manage the
legal aspects of an open source project, but it seems to me to be a harsh
requirement imposed upon those who are already freely contributing something
of value.

Rod

Rod Dixon
Open Source Software Law
Blog: http://opensource.cyberspaces.org






----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Scott Long" <scott at neuralnw.com>
To: <license-discuss at opensource.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2003 7:05 PM
Subject: Re: Which License should I pick?


: On Tue, 9 Dec 2003, Nick Moffitt wrote:
:
: > How do you currently accept submissions?  Do you take patches?
: > Third-party code modules or files?  Think of how you can make clear
: > the permissions granted to you by the contributors.
:
: Well, the project hasn't gone public yet, which is why I'm asking these
: licensing questions. I don't anticipate changes to the basic code base,
: but I do expect that people may want to write various modules.
:
: I wouldn't necessarily be unhappy if those modules remained third-party
: (i.e., they don't become part of the project). Then, I could take care of
: the core code myself and let a packager put it all together into a bundle,
: right? How would the individual licenses of the third party modules affect
: me, if they happened to be packaged together with my code?
:
: Thanks for your response,
: Scott
:
:
: --
: license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3

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