Re: [xwiki-dev] RE: [xwiki-commits] r596 - in xwiki/trunk/src: main/java/com/xpn/xwiki/plugin/packaging test/com/xpn/xwiki/test

This is indeed the current discussion. There are a few advantages of a unique copyright ownership, which include: - easy management of the licence (writing down the copyrights holders, etc..) - easy relicensing the code under a different licence - ability to double licence for clients that would be afraid of GPL, LGPL or anything else - ability to easily defend the copyright against any party that would infringe it But it has also one potential negative effect: - if gives the right to the copyright holder to go away and start a new project under any new licence I think this model works as long as the copyright holder is a foundation with clear goals about what it does, can do and who runs it. With me being the owner of a XPertNet, which in turns has Jeremi as an intern and will have employees which will be contributors that would mean that a bunch of copyrights would be assigned to XPertNet. I think in this model it is not wise to request contributors to assign the copyrights to XPertNet. It would allow the company if acquired to dump the project (but of course without being able to revoke the open source licence on the existing code) and continue on a new project under a closed source licence. If the code is under the GPL or LGPL licence this would give XPertNet more rights than other contributors. In the ASL the only difference it makes is giving the right in enforce the copyright agains infringers. However I think some of the benefits of the unique copyright can be achieved using a contributors aggreement: 1/ Contributors keep their copyright 2/ Contributors give XPertNet the right to use, distribute and sell the software under the GPL or LGPL licence or any subsequent version. 3/ Contributors give XPertNet the right to defend their copyright against potential infringers The main unsolved issue is the easy management of the copyright holders. Having individual contributions make setting the copyright at the top of the page quite an issue. Either we need to put a message that says that the main copyright owner is XPertNet and that for details it should be looked in SVN who made the contributions. Otherwise we might have to list each individual copyright holder or maybe just the main ones. Another solution is to assign the Copyrights to XPertNet but with certain restrictions like having to keep subsequent modifications in the GPL or LGPL. Another solution is to assign the Copyrights to an independent organization (XWiki fundation, ObjectWeb ?, anything else) who would be in charge of the copyright infringements. I'm open for suggestion on this one, given that the objective is to move to the LGPL licence concerning the current code (I think we still need the answer of Jiri on this one). Ludovic Vincent Massol a écrit : -- Ludovic Dubost XPertNet: http://www.xpertnet.fr/ Blog: http://www.ludovic.org/blog/ XWiki: http://www.xwiki.com Skype: ldubost AIM: nvludo Yahoo: ludovic