On Thu, 2011-01-06 at 13:57 +0530, Binand Sethumadhavan wrote:
2011/1/6 Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@thenilgiris.com:
no, rather "oh shit! now that I have accepted these contributions, I cannot use them in my internal company code without a lot of
headache".
Or "Oh shit! this license does not suit my business model".
Now we come to the crux of the matter - if you have accepted contributions from others into your software (which you sell/support), then you are no longer the sole author - you now move into the "distributor" role. And of course, as I have been maintaining, distributors who do not play fair and by the rules lose out in the GPL world.
many people open source code in order to attract developers - and they would like to use such code in their closed versions, if they have such a business model. If it is GPL, then they have to only accept code where the copyright is assigned to them. In the BSD world, this is not necessary. I am making no comments on the morality of this model, but all I say is that if it is your model, then you need BSD.
You obviously have the choice of not accepting third-party contributions without a copyright assignment.
only if it is GPLed