On 02/01/2011 08:22 AM, Mike Gabriel wrote:
Hi Reinhart,
On Di 01 Feb 2011 10:59:10 CET Reinhard Tartler wrote:
On Tue, Feb 01, 2011 at 10:38:06 (CET), Mike Gabriel wrote:
My basic idea would be to bundle source packages into one package if the versioning of the bundled packages will be the same.
E.g.
nxcomp, nxcompext, nxcompshad -> nxlibs.git
In general, it makes more sense to track upstream's structuring, and AFAIUI (please correct me if I'm wrong), this is the structure is provided from NoMachine. However, since 3.4 is reported to be the last GPL'ed version of these libraries, from now on, the community needs to do this upstream work independently from the actual upstream:
Unless NoMachine completely rewrote the NX libs from scratch they cannot change the license nor can they fail to provide any updates made to that code base. Once the GPL license is on a code base ALL derivatives that are distributed in any manner are covered under the GPL no matter who makes them.
<snip>
Greets, Mike
Regards, Gerry
Am 01.02.2011 18:28, Gerry Reno schrieb:
Unless NoMachine completely rewrote the NX libs from scratch they cannot change the license nor can they fail to provide any updates made to that code base. Once the GPL license is on a code base ALL derivatives that are distributed in any manner are covered under the GPL no matter who makes them.
No, this only applies if you license the code. Therefore they can re-license the code under whatever license they wish, as long as they don't violate the rights (licenses) of others.
Morty
On 02/01/2011 01:44 PM, Moritz Strübe wrote:
Am 01.02.2011 18:28, Gerry Reno schrieb:
Unless NoMachine completely rewrote the NX libs from scratch they cannot change the license nor can they fail to provide any updates made to that code base. Once the GPL license is on a code base ALL derivatives that are distributed in any manner are covered under the GPL no matter who makes them.
No, this only applies if you license the code. Therefore they can re-license the code under whatever license they wish, as long as they don't violate the rights (licenses) of others.
Morty
Without knowing the entire history of the NX codebase, I would say that if they were accepting contributions from any contributors that made their contributions under the GPL then they, NoMachine, cannot just summarily change the license of the codebase. They could only change the license for those parts of the codebase that were 100% NoMachine contributions. This is a little detail that appears to elude many of these "commercial" open source companies.
Regards, Gerry
Hi,
On Tue, Feb 01, 2011 at 01:53:27PM -0500, Gerry Reno wrote:
On 02/01/2011 01:44 PM, Moritz Strübe wrote:
Am 01.02.2011 18:28, Gerry Reno schrieb:
Unless NoMachine completely rewrote the NX libs from scratch they cannot change the license nor can they fail to provide any updates made to that code base. Once the GPL license is on a code base ALL derivatives that are distributed in any manner are covered under the GPL no matter who makes them.
Any code released under the GPL remains this way. This does not affect new releases done by the copyright holder.
No, this only applies if you license the code. Therefore they can re-license the code under whatever license they wish, as long as they don't violate the rights (licenses) of others.
Without knowing the entire history of the NX codebase, I would say that if they were accepting contributions from any contributors that made their contributions under the GPL then they, NoMachine, cannot just summarily change the license of the codebase.
They have the copyright on all code in NX, see their contribution guidelines: http://www.nomachine.com/ar/view.php?ar_id=AR12B00113
To spell it out: Nomachine can relicense the NX code any which way they want.
BTW this was the first google result for the query "contribute nomachine nx", a few seconds research would have saved many emails...
Erik
Dipl.-Inform. Erik Auerswald http://www.fg-networking.de/ auerswald@fg-networking.de Tel: +49-631-4149988-0 Fax: +49-631-4149988-9
Gesellschaft für Fundamental Generic Networking mbH Geschäftsführung: Volker Bauer, Jörg Mayer Gerichtsstand: Amtsgericht Kaiserslautern - HRB: 3630
On Tue, 2011-02-01 at 12:28 -0500, Gerry Reno wrote:
On 02/01/2011 08:22 AM, Mike Gabriel wrote: <snip>However, since 3.4 is reported to be the last
GPL'ed version of these libraries, from now on, the community needs to do this upstream work independently from the actual upstream:
Unless NoMachine completely rewrote the NX libs from scratch they cannot change the license nor can they fail to provide any updates made to that code base. Once the GPL license is on a code base ALL derivatives that are distributed in any manner are covered under the GPL no matter who makes them.
<snip> I'm not sure if that's true if they also own all the copyrights or at least unlimited rights to all submitted code. Then they can simply issue the entire code body under a different license. At least that's the way I think it works and why some organizations are quite adamant about having full rights to all submissions even if they do not own the copyright - John
On 02/01/2011 01:45 PM, John A. Sullivan III wrote:
On Tue, 2011-02-01 at 12:28 -0500, Gerry Reno wrote:
On 02/01/2011 08:22 AM, Mike Gabriel wrote: <snip>However, since 3.4 is reported to be the last
GPL'ed version of these libraries, from now on, the community needs to do this upstream work independently from the actual upstream:
Unless NoMachine completely rewrote the NX libs from scratch they cannot change the license nor can they fail to provide any updates made to that code base. Once the GPL license is on a code base ALL derivatives that are distributed in any manner are covered under the GPL no matter who makes them.
<snip> I'm not sure if that's true if they also own all the copyrights or at least unlimited rights to all submitted code. Then they can simply issue the entire code body under a different license. At least that's the way I think it works and why some organizations are quite adamant about having full rights to all submissions even if they do not own the copyright - John
And that is exactly what some "commercial" open source companies are using to actually benefit (exploit) open source and then after the project is so far along then they adopt a closed license and screw the open source community.
Regards, Gerry
On 02/01/2011 01:55 PM, Gerry Reno wrote:
On 02/01/2011 01:45 PM, John A. Sullivan III wrote:
On Tue, 2011-02-01 at 12:28 -0500, Gerry Reno wrote:
On 02/01/2011 08:22 AM, Mike Gabriel wrote: <snip>However, since 3.4 is reported to be the last
GPL'ed version of these libraries, from now on, the community needs to do this upstream work independently from the actual upstream:
Unless NoMachine completely rewrote the NX libs from scratch they cannot change the license nor can they fail to provide any updates made to that code base. Once the GPL license is on a code base ALL derivatives that are distributed in any manner are covered under the GPL no matter who makes them.
<snip> I'm not sure if that's true if they also own all the copyrights or at least unlimited rights to all submitted code. Then they can simply issue the entire code body under a different license. At least that's the way I think it works and why some organizations are quite adamant about having full rights to all submissions even if they do not own the copyright - John
And that is exactly what some "commercial" open source companies are using to actually benefit (exploit) open source and then after the project is so far along then they adopt a closed license and screw the open source community.
Regards, Gerry
Back in the day, this was known as "bait and switch".
And it's still quite alive today, even in the new digital age.
Regards, Gerry
On Tue, 2011-02-01 at 13:55 -0500, Gerry Reno wrote:
On 02/01/2011 01:45 PM, John A. Sullivan III wrote:
On Tue, 2011-02-01 at 12:28 -0500, Gerry Reno wrote:
On 02/01/2011 08:22 AM, Mike Gabriel wrote: <snip>However, since 3.4 is reported to be the last
GPL'ed version of these libraries, from now on, the community needs to do this upstream work independently from the actual upstream:
Unless NoMachine completely rewrote the NX libs from scratch they cannot change the license nor can they fail to provide any updates made to that code base. Once the GPL license is on a code base ALL derivatives that are distributed in any manner are covered under the GPL no matter who makes them.
<snip> I'm not sure if that's true if they also own all the copyrights or at least unlimited rights to all submitted code. Then they can simply issue the entire code body under a different license. At least that's the way I think it works and why some organizations are quite adamant about having full rights to all submissions even if they do not own the copyright - John
And that is exactly what some "commercial" open source companies are using to actually benefit (exploit) open source and then after the project is so far along then they adopt a closed license and screw the open source community.
<snip> Indeed, that's why we're pretty careful about which Open Source projects we use and support. Although some do seem to use it responsibly just in order to avoid the impossibility of tracking down all contributors for a large code base. If I recall correctly, both Apache and Samba take this approach. It's certainly one of the reasons we were delighted to find X2Go and support it wholeheartedly - John
On 02/01/2011 02:15 PM, John A. Sullivan III wrote:
On Tue, 2011-02-01 at 13:55 -0500, Gerry Reno wrote:
On 02/01/2011 01:45 PM, John A. Sullivan III wrote:
On Tue, 2011-02-01 at 12:28 -0500, Gerry Reno wrote:
On 02/01/2011 08:22 AM, Mike Gabriel wrote: <snip>However, since 3.4 is reported to be the last
GPL'ed version of these libraries, from now on, the community needs to do this upstream work independently from the actual upstream:
Unless NoMachine completely rewrote the NX libs from scratch they cannot change the license nor can they fail to provide any updates made to that code base. Once the GPL license is on a code base ALL derivatives that are distributed in any manner are covered under the GPL no matter who makes them.
<snip> I'm not sure if that's true if they also own all the copyrights or at least unlimited rights to all submitted code. Then they can simply issue the entire code body under a different license. At least that's the way I think it works and why some organizations are quite adamant about having full rights to all submissions even if they do not own the copyright - John
And that is exactly what some "commercial" open source companies are using to actually benefit (exploit) open source and then after the project is so far along then they adopt a closed license and screw the open source community.
<snip> Indeed, that's why we're pretty careful about which Open Source projects we use and support. Although some do seem to use it responsibly just in order to avoid the impossibility of tracking down all contributors for a large code base. If I recall correctly, both Apache and Samba take this approach. It's certainly one of the reasons we were delighted to find X2Go and support it wholeheartedly - John
And this is also why is so critically important that the project repository have all of the history of the codebase in it back to day one.
If there were ever a challenge from "out of the blue" by someone claiming rights to part of the codebase we could query the repository and find out exactly who, what ,when, etc. was involved in the code in question.
Regards, Gerry
On 02/01/2011 02:22 PM, Gerry Reno wrote:
On 02/01/2011 02:15 PM, John A. Sullivan III wrote:
<snip>
Although some do seem to use it responsibly just in order to avoid the impossibility of tracking down all contributors for a large code base. If I recall correctly, both Apache and Samba take this approach.
<snip>
And this is exactly the problem that using copyleft license, such as the GPL, as the *only* license helps to avoid. Even if you can no longer reach contributors from long ago, the mere fact that it was the only license means that the lineage of the codebase remains legally defensible.
Regards, Gerry
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Erik Auerswald -
Gerry Reno -
John A. Sullivan III -
Moritz Strübe