[Gllug] License debates

[Caroline Ford]

Chris Jones wrote:
> Hi
>
> SteveC wrote:
>   
>> I'm well aware of all the issues for and against - I'm looking for
>> community processes, how consensus was found... stuff like that. Are we
>>     
>
> Quite often it's simply that a significant amount of work has been done
> in a particular licence and so it's just easier to go along with it.
>
>
>   
I think these things are generally decided by the founder(s) and 
contributions have to be under that licence and it is impossible to 
change license without discarding all the old material.

At least that is how wiki-based projects tend to do it. What licence are 
people currently submitting work under?

I'm not sure that a community based discussion is realistic. You'll 
never get consensus and it could just create divisions. The GPL people 
will have weight of numbers and the BSD people will get pissed off.

Framing the argument as CC-BY vs CC-BY-SA will make it less like OS war 
but people will still be sheep like. I expect Microsoft's use of BSD 
sockets will still be invoked and people will still vote "for linux" or 
whatever ;)

For something as important as the license I'd just announce it. I can 
see no benefit for your community in this intractable argument. Your 
problem may be that if it goes the "wrong" way the linux boys will fork it..

Caroline
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