[MonoDevelop] Licensing concerns.

Miguel de Icaza miguel@ximian.com
Wed, 14 Jul 2004 11:38:02 -0400


Hello,

> >What is a shame is that MonoDevelop will *never* be able to run
> >proprietary plugins, or use plugins that are incompatible with the GPL,
> >since it would require every author from the original SharpDevelop and
> >MonoDevelop to relicense their contributions.
> >
> >I know that you are interested in licensing the SharpDevelop core and
> >you own the copyright to all the code, but MonoDevelop is no longer
> >owned by you, so without every contributor in MonoDevelop agreeing to
> >this change we are screwed.
> >
> >Hence why MonoDevelop is at disadvantage with Eclipse.
> 
> MD is a fork of SharpDevelop which is a GPL application, so the MD 
> developers *had* to know what they were doing.

You are absolutely right.

Am presenting my analysis here, remember, I have to support Eclipse ;-)

And may this serve as a lesson in the future as a practical problems of
the GPL in community-based development.

Miguel.