rusefi.com

With people contributing larger and larger chunks of stuff to this project, we need to figure out what to do with contributions licensing.

I really like ChibiOS approach: If you plan to contribute code to the ChibiOS/RT project then there is a requirement you should be aware of: contributing code for inclusion in the ChibiOS/RT main line requires assigning the copyrights on the contributed code to me (Giovanni Di Sirio). Are there other examples of this approach?

There are also examples of a less radical approach:
Google would ask you to sign an agreement online: https://developers.google.com/open-source/cla/individual?csw=1
Apache would ask you to sign an agreement (offline?): http://openoffice.apache.org/contributing-code.html

Update: full copyright assignment is too crazy for our purposes, a proper contributor license agreement would be good enough.

The more I look into this the more I realize how non-trivial this issue is

I have added a note to the license that contributions have to agree to waive their copyrights. Obviously this is all pretty lame and it would all be up to who has a better lawyer anyway
update: it's now GPL 3.0 license without any amendments.

russian wrote:The more I look into this the more I realize how non-trivial this issue is

I have added a note that contributions have to agree to waive their copyrights. Obviously this is all pretty lame and it would all be up to who has a better lawyer anyway

It only makes a big difference if you plan on commercializing it.

As far as choosing a license, it comes down to 'what are you afraid of"

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82321/

If you're scared of having your name dragged through the mud, then the BSD license will seem better. If you're scared of having your software put into a proprietary piece of software, then the GPL will seem better. Whatever the license, the author chooses it because it protects them against what they are afraid of.

jedediah_frey wrote:

russian wrote:The more I look into this the more I realize how non-trivial this issue is

I have added a note that contributions have to agree to waive their copyrights. Obviously this is all pretty lame and it would all be up to who has a better lawyer anyway

It only makes a big difference if you plan on commercializing it.

As far as choosing a license, it comes down to 'what are you afraid of"

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82321/

If you're scared of having your name dragged through the mud, then the BSD license will seem better. If you're scared of having your software put into a proprietary piece of software, then the GPL will seem better. Whatever the license, the author chooses it because it protects them against what they are afraid of.

Nope, IP (intellectual property), is a large part of it. Too many for profit knock offs, just look at ebay. If a person was to use it for personal use, then most would have no objections, but far too much gets ripped off and used for profit.

Seen too much open source, just stop because it got used as not intended. This is from a company that recently sold for billions... looked a crash log and a bunch of open source was in there.

Update: http://rusefi.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=773

Nobody wrote:

jedediah_frey wrote:

russian wrote:The more I look into this the more I realize how non-trivial this issue is

It only makes a big difference if you plan on commercializing it.

If you're scared of having your software put into a proprietary piece of software, then the GPL will seem better.

Too many for profit knock offs, just look at ebay. If a person was to use it for personal use, then most would have no objections, but far too much gets ripped off and used for profit.

I think that is in fact my fear. The GPL licence was chosen so that any potential derived commercial product is forced to also be open source, mostly because yes, I would like to keep the door open for licensing derived closed source products - I am stating this clearly and openly for the sake of transparency. This is also the reason why in my view there should be an exclusive copyright holder and not a joint copyright spread across multiple contributors.

full copyright assignment is too crazy for our purposes, a proper contributor license agreement would be good enough.

A contributor has contributed a bunch of great links about the problem of contributions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement
http://qt-project.org/contributionagreement.html
https://wikis.oracle.com/display/mysql/Contributing+Code+to+MySQL
http://opensource.org/faq#contributor-agreements

HOWTO contribute via Github:

1) register on github, log to your github account
2) on the web, "fork" https://github.com/rusefi/rusefi
3) git clone --recursive https://github.com/YOURUSERNAME/rusefi
4) make local changes
5) git commit
6) git push
7) on the web, "create pull request"

TODO: find a like where this is explained in more details

heck. what's the size of the whole project?
Do I have to git clone --recursive https://github.com/YOURUSERNAME/rusefi every time I want to make some changes? Is there a way to make an incremental clone?
had to use git add firmware/hw_layer/can_hw.cpp

Good news is you only need to clone once, after that you only update changes with git pull

Bad news is that you would need to sync even your remove fork - see https://help.github.com/articles/syncing-a-fork/

I like the plain default git-gui, it allows you to select which files to commit, which files not to commit.

definitely needs a nice explanation - what is this pull, push, commit and sync...

Am I allowed to get a license if I want to change the code but not contribute back? Can the code be re-licensed by the author especially for the case?
This is only a hypothetical question, I don't think I'll ever make a change so important.

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(For the second question I'm almost sure, but asking anyway.) Am I allowed to sell a rusEfi kit (PCB and software) if I didn't make any change? Under the license terms of the project, of course.

As I understand (maybe only a lawyer can understand all this... ) the project owner wants a copyright transfer of the contributions in order to preserve his right to issue different than GPL-ed licenses?

Thanks!

Copyright owner can grant different licenses in paraller. Yes the reason for contributor agreement is to avoid dilution of rights.