Ubuntu Edge Campaign Set To Close At $12M USD

[chrisb]

Uh, back to the topic of this campaign, does anyone else find it ironic how they didn't want to do Android emulation in Ubuntu Phone for ideological (not technical, mind you) reasons, and yet this phone was supposed to dual-boot Android? No? Just me? Whatever.

I think the lack of Android compatibility is for legal rather than ideological reasons. Oracle is still appealing Google's supposed "theft" of Java, so there is still a (hopefully small) possibility that Dalvik could get banned. A compatibility layer project will probably happen at some point, but perhaps it will compile to Java bytecode rather than Dalvik bytecode. Who knows what APIs will be safe. Would be great if it happened, obviously there is demand for Android apps, and Jolla is doing it.

[mether]

Does Red Hat open source all of their server side projects? I know they do some (eg. Spacewalk), but all? And does Red Hat require a contributor license for any projects? I know the Red Hat CCM license gives Red Hat the right to do anything with the code, including relicense it, but I don't know which projects actually use it. As I said before, if the community really wants a symmetrical licensing agreement for Mir, then it would trivial to fork it, just like LibreOffice or MariaDB. As with those projects, the original project would be unable to integrate patches from the fork unless they began to accept non-CLA contributions.

Red Hat does open source everything including proprietary software it buys from other companies. None of the Red Hat maintained projects (with the potential exception of Cygnus for legacy reasons) require any sort of copyright assignment or sublicensing. CCM license is not used by ANY Red Hat project and is a entirely deprecated license. Also, community cannot really change the asymmetrical licensing of Mir. If you fork a GPL'ed project, you cannot create a proprietary fork of it. Only Canonical is allowed to create proprietary forks of Mir.

[danielnez1]

CCM license is not used by ANY Red Hat project and is a entirely deprecated license.

But what would stop Red Hat, or any other company etc. for that matter from (re)introducing a CLA in the future?

[chrisb]

But what would stop Red Hat, or any other company etc. for that matter from (re)introducing a CLA in the future?

Fedora has a CLA but it allows the contributor to specify the license - Fedora Project Contributor Agreement: "If Your Contribution is Licensed, Your Contribution will be governed by the terms under which it has been licensed." So they can't change the license if you specify a license. But if you don't specify a license, then they can relicense it "from a list of acceptable licenses".

Obviously there is nothing stopping them from introducing a CLA for either new or existing projects, but it would only apply to new contributions, they can't retroactively change the license on existing code that came from external contributors who specified a license.

[danielnez1]

Obviously there is nothing stopping them from introducing a CLA for either new or existing projects, but it would only apply to new contributions, they can't retroactively change the license on existing code that came from external contributors who specified a license.

That is my point exactly, likewise if Canonical decided to chance the licence of Mir, they can't retrospectively apply the new licence to versions released prior to the change.

I'm no fan of Canonical nor am I keen on CLAs however as the GPL doesn?t prevent, for those Companies and/or individuals who have GPL based projects etc. I believe we have to take it on face value that they wont use CLAs.

[andydread]

Gnome started started a shitstorm on Linux, greatly increased fragmentation. It still seems like every update to Gnome 3 breaks something like theming or whatever. Everyone else is trying to fix this mess. But when Gnome does it it's fine, when someone else does something like that it's the end of the world. By the way, if I recall correctly the plan is to release Gnome 4 as "Gnome OS", another distro among the thousands currently in existance, isn't it?



So what? If in a century they release something you contributed to as closed source just fork it and get it over with. It's GPL FFS. You don't lose anything. Licensing as MIT, BSD, Apache or public domain allows any proprietary software to use it. Where's the people calling MIT/BSD/Apache projects crap?

Here is the real joke. If you look at the people on here bashing Ubuntu because well..."Canonical can make GPL3 code proprietary" These are the same exact people who are crowing that Wayland is the best thing since slice bread and it may well be however it is lisenced under an MIT license. Thats right I said that correctly an MIT license. Now we all know that any code....any code licensed under MIT can be taken proprietary by ANYONE including Microsoft and Apple and they have done this. Yet we don't see all the bitching about Wayland/Weston is bad because anyone can take the code are redistribute it as proprietary. SO you see?.... Haters just want to hate and will irrationally grab at anything they think will help their cause. Kinda like the birthers and truthers.

[mether]

Obviously there is nothing stopping them from introducing a CLA for either new or existing projects, but it would only apply to new contributions, they can't retroactively change the license on existing code that came from external contributors who specified a license.

Red Hat CANNOT introduce a CLA in any existing project if it has accepted ANY non-Red Hat contributions without the CLA. Since all existing Red Hat projects have done so, Red Hat is not legally permitted to introduce a CLA anymore in any current project.

[mether]

That is my point exactly, likewise if Canonical decided to chance the licence of Mir, they can't retrospectively apply the new licence to versions released prior to the change. I'm no fan of Canonical nor am I keen on CLAs however as the GPL doesn?t prevent, for those Companies and/or individuals who have GPL based projects etc. I believe we have to take it on face value that they wont use CLAs.

This is not true. Canonical has every legal right to sell a proprietary fork of Mir or Upstart at any point of time because the CLA lets them do exactly that but for any current project that has accepted contributions from more than one vendor, they lose the legal right to introduce a CLA.

[andydread]

This is not true. Canonical has every legal right to sell a proprietary fork of Mir or Upstart at any point of time because the CLA lets them do exactly that but for any current project that has accepted contributions from more than one vendor, they lose the legal right to introduce a CLA.

Yes and they have the right to fork Wayland and release a proprietary binary without releasing the source. So what is your point? Again this is just straw man arguement. The code is GPL3. Like any other project people can fork the GPL3 code and continue on without a CLA. All this "Other CLAs are good but Canonical CLA=bad" really highlights the riduclousness of the screaming about CLAs when even the FSF requires you to sign over your copyright to them yet Canonical does not...just shows that people are just bitter and will latch on to anything to validate their bitterness.

[mether]

Yes and they have the right to fork Wayland and release a proprietary binary without releasing the source. So what is your point? Again this is just straw man arguement. The code is GPL3. Like any other project people can fork the GPL3 code and continue on without a CLA. All this "Other CLAs are good but Canonical CLA=bad" really highlights the riduclousness of the screaming about CLAs when even the FSF requires you to sign over your copyright to them yet Canonical does not...just shows that people are just bitter and will latch on to anything to validate their bitterness.

I assume you didn't prior discussions. In Wayland, everyone has the right. In Mir, ONLY Canonical has the exclusive right to create a proprietary fork. That is the point. Also, FSF is a non-profit foundation that has the legal requirement mandated within the contract you sign with them, not to ever create proprietary forks. So the situation is nowhere near the same.