Re: The company that wants to contribute (was Re: [Duplicity-talk] Version 0.5.07 Released)

[Michael Terry]

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 7:32 AM, Quim Gil <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I'm a member of the Maemo team at Nokia

Hello, Quim!

I also appreciate the information.  Though you weren't terribly
clearer about exactly why your lawyers have reservations, I understand
that they do, and that their explanation might not even be parsable by
non-lawyers anyway.  I assume they are just being conservative,
pending more case law.

Which isn't likely to change in the short term.  So the Duplicity
community is being offered the tradeoff of quicker implementation of
certain features for less legal protections for its codebase.

I believe Nokia is acting in good faith and doesn't intend to legally
abuse the codebase.  I also think the GPLv2 is on the balance a pretty
decent license, and I would like to see those listed features
implemented.  So for me, it's a tradeoff I'm willing to make.
Kenneth, when you compile the list of people that need to sign off on
this, you have permission to relicense my patches under the GPLv2+.

However, obviously just bear in mind that even if we do trust Nokia,
we would still lose those protections from all parties, not just them.

Sorry if I've been a been a pain about this, Ken.  I appreciate your
friendly and prompt responses to my concerns.  This proposed licensing
change is no longer so sudden, mysterious, or legally questionable.
:)

I talked more with my friend Andrew the Lawyer today.  I was concerned
with how a relicensing would affect Deja Dup (which is also GPLv3+).
Andrew seemed to feel that Deja Dup was not so tightly tied to
Duplicity as to be a 'derivative work' and thus wouldn't be affected
by the license of Duplicity.  Even if it were, he thought that the
license choice of 'GPLv2 or later' could be made at runtime and Deja
Dup could call duplicity in a GPLv3-choosing manner.  ::shrug::  I can
understand why lawyers would have uncertainty about the GPL.

-mt