Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2013 9:40 pm
You are definitely mad.
Sega Megadrive/Genesis development
http://gendev.spritesmind.net/forum/
http://gendev.spritesmind.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1450
I think perhaps you're misunderstanding what I've written. You might want to go over it again and pick some specific points you would like to see done differently. I've picked a standard open-source license, and I'm no longer talking about a no-forking policy at all. Bitbucket and JIRA have nothing to do with licensing, and in fact they make contributions and shared development simpler, not more complex.clobber wrote:I've selected the Microsoft Reciprocal License (Ms-RL) as the "primary" open source license to use.Wat.Contributor License Agreement (CLA) for any code submissions
I really can't believe how difficult you're making this. You wrote a cycle-precise Mega Drive emulator, not an operating system kernel. The amount of hoops you want people to jump through just to send you a patch is insane and will lead to no contributions.I'll be doing bug tracking and managing development tasks using a JIRA OnDemand (hosted) instance under the free open source licensing offer, linked to BitBucket for code change integration.
You should take a few steps back and think about if you really want to open source, because it sounds like you don't.
You're worried about forks and cite Gens, but Stéphane open sourcing the original Gens is one of the best things that happened to the community. Same with Genesis Plus from Charles.
It's just a shame more users aren't aware of the amazing work Eke has done with GenesisPlus-GX, because it's the best Mega Drive/CD emu out right now.
Color me completely confused here. You basically want a very free license but you're concerned about commercial use which is almost always allowed unless you're MAME, and having to 'allow re-linking' to closed-source code which is exactly the point of using such a license (or even inclusion inside closed-source code). And you don't want the GPL because it's 'viral' except:Nemesis wrote:I've selected the Microsoft Reciprocal License (Ms-RL) as the "primary" open source license to use.
...and that it causes 'fragmentation', except that's proven to keep a project alive long after the primary developer loses interest.Nemesis wrote:but any assembly which contains compiled Ms-RL licensed code code (IE, anything which links directly to the support libraries in particular) has to follow that license, and you have to release source code changes for any code you modify.
B-but, with the GPL you have the power of Richard Stallman's beard! And if any crazy proprietary-code-ninjas try to use your code illegally, he'll slice them up with his katana.Nemesis wrote:The GPL is specifically designed to try and force other projects to use the GPL too. I don't want to impose license restrictions on other projects, I simply want to retain the open source nature of code contributed to Exodus.
If what you want is a very permissive license with patent protection, you could always license the code and the patents separately. That's what WebM did: code under BSD, patents under the patent section of Apache. The additional freedoms granted by this model are fairly marginal: removes the obligation to mark modifications as such, and removes the "Notice" file organization clause. Nevertheless, since you have yet to release your project, adopting this combination should be easier now than if you decided to do so in the future (although as far as I know BSD/MIT and Apache are fully compatible with each other).Nemesis wrote:1. Generic utility libraries - Apache 2.0 License:
This code is basically being released free, with no restrictions. People can use it for any purpose, modify it, whatever, and not have to release their changes back. This license is basically a more modern and legally bulletproof version of the permissive MIT and FreeBSD licenses. The only difference is a more clear, explicit legal language, and some protection in regards to patent laws, something that simply wasn't on the radar when the MIT/FreeBSD licenses were made. Unfortunately the patent protection renders the Apache 2.0 license incompatible with the GPLv2 license, but it's fully compatible with the GPLv3 license.