[Zope] Zwiki contributor policy update
Simon Michael
simon at joyful.com
Sun Dec 11 11:03:52 EST 2005
Hi all!
I'm slightly burned out and bored with certain areas of Zope 2 Zwiki
development. I think the product will provide some value for a while
yet, and it's not too late to shake things up and make a bigger splash.
If we don't do this during the period of Zwiki & Zope 2's relevance, our
good work will bring less benefit than it might have. So I'm putting out
a call for help. I'd really like to see more people take on development
of Zwiki.
What are the roadblocks - of my making, and otherwise - to a more active
Zwiki developer community ? For one thing I needed to nail down some
copyright/license issues more explicitly, to make contributing and
accepting contributions more of a no-brainer. Here's my latest thinking:
LICENSE
Much Zope code uses the ZPL. We want to maximize code sharing and
participation with the whole Zope community. Much of the rest of the
FOSS world uses the GPL, and the same goes for them. Dual GPL/ZPL
licensing may seem a good option, but I'm convinced it's not worth the
added complexity, legal uncertainty and fragmentation; either straight
GPL or straight ZPL is preferable. GPL is the mainstream license for the
future IMHO, I think it's still the best option, and I have no plan to
leave it. Also I think we should adopt GPLv3?
<http://zwiki.org/PolicyAnnouncementDraft/createform?page=GPLv3> when
it's ready. That said, there's now clear policy allowing non-GPL code to
be added to Zwiki if necessary (below). Also I remain open to license
exemption requests from Zope developers.
COPYRIGHT
I no longer think the single copyright holder policy is best for this
project, and I'm going to drop it. I am changing the main repo's policy
to multiple copyright holders (& allowing multiple licenses), with the
simple condition that the overall project manager is assigned the right
to relicense to newer license versions. The powerful darcs revision
control system (together with new CONTRIBUTORS list) should help us to
keep track of copyright & licensing status and even remove problematic
commits later if needed.
CONTRIBUTOR'S AGREEMENT
To ensure that everyone gets proper credit for their work; a clear audit
trail and legal status for the project; and that the project can remain
license-compatible with other free & open-source software in future, I
have added a very simple contributor agreement/contributor list:
http://zwiki.org/repos/ZWiki/CONTRIBUTORS.txt . All Zwiki contributors
should read and consider signing this file, to help us meet these goals.
You can follow this easy procedure to add your name to the glorious list:
(install darcs if needed, see http://darcs.net/DarcsWiki/CategoryBinaries)
darcs get --partial http://zwiki.org/repos/ZWiki
cd ZWiki
echo "- Your Name <your at email>" >>CONTRIBUTORS.txt
darcs record -a -m"signed it" CONTRIBUTORS.txt
(enter your name & email address again)
darcs send
This will become the authoritative list of code committers (at least),
and I'll be working to make sure all of you are listed properly. Many
have donated their time and creativity over the years - this list will
make that clearer.
All comments, help and other ideas welcome. And I hope to see some of
you online or off. Happy holidays, and thanks
-Simon
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