[MonoDevelop] Licensing concerns.

[John Luke]

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 19:00:56 +0200, Bernhard Spuida
<bernhard@icsharpcode.net> wrote:
> I would rather generalise: Open Source is not a carefree happy
> coder's paradise, however tempting this idealistic point of view may
> be. Same as in commercial code development, licensing, correct
> attribution of copyright and related issues do matter, whether we
> like it or not.
> Lessons learned:
> 
> 1) Choose carefully which license you want to use for your project.
> Do so before making your code public. (In Mike's case, going GPL was
> a deliberate choice and he stands by it.) Consider what this might
> mean in the future - will it limit popular adoption? Do I care about
> popularity - and possible commercial success?
> 
> 2) If you plan to reuse code from other projects, fork a project or
> depend on previous work, familiarize yourself with the implications
> of the licenses and legal issues involved. Just skimming the preamble
> of a legal text is not enough.

Um, thanks for insulting me.

> 
> 3) For your project, set up a proper process for assignment and
> attribution of copyrights. Painful as this may look at first sight,
> it will save a lot of trouble later on. Recent legal developments
> have proven this. And we may assume this to get more of an issue in
> the future.
> 
> I am also less than happy about the turn things took, but time cannot
> be turned back and decisions cannot be unmade.
> Regards,
> 
>                      Bernhard Spuida
>                      #develop senior word wrangler
> 

In case their is some confusion:
 - I am ok with SharpDevelop's position with AddIns, I just think
   it is the wrong choice.  I have no problem licensing everything
   I wrote to do with MD under those terms.  I only think that
   independent 3rd party AddIns that are not part of the Core/Base
   be allowed to be licensed on their own terms.  (Think NVidia drivers)
 - I am not asking them to change their license, or position on AddIns.
   That is for them and others to decide based on what their goals and
   business plan is.
 - This is only one of many reasons I decided to stop work on MonoDevelop.
 - I have as much familiarity of all aspects of the GPL as anyone else does
   that is not a lawyer.  I have looked into it carefully in the past, long
   before I was around here.  It is an acceptable license in my opinion, just
   unclear on a few points that will hopefully be addressed in the next
   revision (if there is one).
 - Last, this does not have to be a sad situation.  There are very large open
   source projects that have a similar licensing situation and are widely
   successful.  MonoDevelop and SharpDevelop can be the next, and I hope
   they will.