KDE Developers Continue To Be Frustrated With Canonical

[dh04000]

Michael, can you set up a bot to automatically add a comment with this quote every time someone mentions CLA's ?

No, its just people using their reasoning skills. Maybe you should try?

[Alex Sarmiento]

I am not against the CLA existence, and the same as you, I think it makes a lot of sense for Canonical. I disagree in that it fully maintains the spirit of free software intact, as IMO symmetry is part of that spirit

Please notice that i did not say just "free software". Free software could be closed source and proprietary software for free. Instead, i said free (as libre) open source software. So what i said was absolutely right . But now i am wondering about what Aaron Seigo , some KDE developers and others really mean when they talk about "free software " or something like that.

If you meant by "free software", the freedom to implement closed source proprietary derivates without giving anything back , then i guess that from a commercial and non open source point of view , the Canonical's CLA might not look so convenient for some. But still, that is not unfair at all, why would that be unfair if we are talking about a signature initiative of Canonical?. My understanding is that Wayland is more liberal, that is all.

[mrugiero]

[QUOTE=Alex Sarmiento;368266I repeat, CLA's are asymmetrical by nature.[/QUOTE]

Well, actually, not all of them. Fedora's current CLA only defaults code without an explicit license to be MIT. It is perfectly symmetrical.
Of course, the general case is that CLAs are asymmetrical, as that's usually the main reason they use it.

[Alex Sarmiento]

Well, actually, not all of them. Fedora's current CLA only defaults code without an explicit license to be MIT. It is perfectly symmetrical.
Of course, the general case is that CLAs are asymmetrical, as that's usually the main reason they use it.

I did not know that even fedora has a CLA, LOL . If you are careless about the license of your own contribution then i am sure you are careless about issues of asymmetry and symmetry .

[mrugiero]

I did not know that even fedora has a CLA, LOL . If you are careless about the license of your own contribution then i am sure you are careless about issues of asymmetry and symmetry .

Not necessarily. Sometimes you just don't know how these things work, and assume not stating a license equals putting it in the public domain, which is somewhat equivalent to giving it an MIT license, which is symmetrical by itself, and liberal.

[dee.]

Please notice that i did not say just "free software". Free software could be closed source and proprietary software for free. Instead, i said free (as libre) open source software. So what i said was absolutely right . But now i am wondering about what Aaron Seigo , some KDE developers and others really mean when they talk about "free software " or something like that.

If you meant by "free software", the freedom to implement closed source proprietary derivates without giving anything back , then i guess that from a commercial and non open source point of view , the Canonical's CLA might not look so convenient for some. But still, that is not unfair at all, why would that be unfair if we are talking about a signature initiative of Canonical?. My understanding is that Wayland is more liberal, that is all.

Free software is Free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation, or FSF. It's a very unambiguous term. GNU GPL is a Free software license. All free software is open source, but not all open source software is free software (although most of it is).

Something that is proprietary and gratis is not free software, it's instead called freeware. Learn the terminology!

[mrugiero]

Please notice that i did not say just "free software". Free software could be closed source and proprietary software for free. Instead, i said free (as libre) open source software. So what i said was absolutely right . But now i am wondering about what Aaron Seigo , some KDE developers and others really mean when they talk about "free software " or something like that.

If you meant by "free software", the freedom to implement closed source proprietary derivates without giving anything back , then i guess that from a commercial and non open source point of view , the Canonical's CLA might not look so convenient for some. But still, that is not unfair at all, why would that be unfair if we are talking about a signature initiative of Canonical?. My understanding is that Wayland is more liberal, that is all.

Free software, as in libre software, which is what I meant and what the term "free software" is used in this context for (as dee. pointed out, what you thought you were lecturing me about is called freeware), is software that gives you at least four basic freedoms, as the FSF defines it. There is free copyleft software and there is free liberal software. The first one requires modifications to be free, too, the other doesn't. This doesn't make the original software any less free, as you can not close the original code and it will remain available as long as its authors want.
When you talk about "free software" not being something freely close-able, then the CLA gets in the way. It just makes it asymmetrically close-able, but its derivatives can still become closed source. It just means there is a single entity telling who can and who can not make a closed source derivative. In that context, the GPLv3 has almost only a commercial meaning, as it doesn't really prevent closed derivatives from being created, but allows you only if you convince (usually paying) a single entity. So, if you are a purist, where free software must remain free, the CLA gets in the way. If you are more liberal, and think your code should be freely used in any way their receptors want, CLA gets in the way, because the GPLv3 disables them and have to ask permission to the one with the right to relicense (in this case, Canonical).
So, not, what you said wasn't completely right, because in both of the most common ways to see free software, the CLA introduces new problems. And there is the spirit of free software, who gets which freedoms. Asymmetry might be seen, depending on a person's values on it, as free or as not really free.


I never said it is "unfair". A developer knows before contributing any code that this is part of the deal, and can decide not to contribute if he/she doesn't agree with this.