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List:       opensolaris-code
Subject:    [osol-code] Fwd: [on-discuss] [driver-discuss] "community supported
From:       timeless <timeless () gmail ! com>
Date:       2009-10-29 9:09:22
Message-ID: 26b395e60910290209n44f46f22ya6bbfe46c342d07f () mail ! gmail ! com
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On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 8:38 PM, Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld@sun.com> wrote:
> Other examples of why a contributor agreement is important:
>
> Anyone who follows Freenode's #mercurial channel knows that they're
> going through a relicensing exercise at the moment, attempting to
> contact developers who contributed code.  They say they're up to "96%"
> at this point but it's an extended exercise.  In many cases all they
> have for the contributor is a name and an email address which no longer
> works.
>
> Additionally, if a contributor has died (it happens!) it may prove to be
> difficult to find someone who represents the estate to agree to a
> proposed change.
>
> An appropriately structured contributor agreement protects the entire
> community and prevents it from having to discard contributions when
> contributors wander off.

FWIW, Mercurial isn't the first place to do a relicensing.
Netscape/Mozilla have gone through a couple of them. And yes, we've
had deaths there too.

It's certainly not the most enjoyable of processes, and tends to be
rather prolonged, but it can work.

 (And yes, I've agreed to the Mozilla relicensing and the Mercurial
relicensing, having contributed to both.)

I'm not saying I have an opinion one way or the other wrt contribution
requirements. I believe I understand the viewpoints of most parties.
Personally I greatly dislike the LGPL/GPL licenses, but have chosen to
allow my code to be relicensed anyway in each of these cases. I think
in the end I'd probably be willing to make a grant that says "the
community may relicense my contributions at its discretion" because
essentially that has been the spirit of my decisions to date.

OTOH, I'm not certain I understand enough of OpenSolaris to say
whether it has the necessary independent community to make this work
for me or others. (Yes, I know foundations get talked about here. It's
probably best to wait 2-5 more years before worrying about that.
Someday I hope to see Maemo go that way too, but it's too early there
too.)
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