This might be "legal" as the main author may have rights over the whole program but it is surely not very ethical: LinCVS has had contributions from many others than the main developer. What do you think?
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 12:42:39 +0100 From: Tilo Riemer riemer@lincvs.de To: lincvs-users@sunsite.dk Subject: [lincvs-users] Commercial version of LinCVS
Hello,
The first release of the commercial version of LinCVS is out.
LinCVS XXL is an enhanced development from the LinCVS open source CVS client for professional users. Functionality and features have been extended with regard to the requirements of commercial deployment. Details can be taken from the documentation at the LinCVS XXL support page (http://lincvs.com/support-xxl_en.php). LinCVS XXL is a proprietary solution and not available for free.
Since more than five years, LinCVS has been developed as an open source project, exclusively during spare time. Now a point has been reached which requires a change in activities. Time and financial requirements have reached a level where further development without monetary support is no longer possible. However, this will be compensated by the development of a proprietary and extended version, based on LinCVS. At present, this proprietary version will only be available for Windows. Additional versions for Linux/Unix and Mac OS X will follow. The LinCVS open source project will of course be continued in the present format. The extended LinCVS XXL thereby benefits from the collective experience of the worldwide users comunity. The ultimate aim is the development of a platform independent graphical frontend, to be used intuitively and supporting common, non-commercial source code management systems.
Best regards, Tilo
On 23-Feb-2005, Xavier Amatriain wrote:
This might be "legal" as the main author may have rights over the whole program
Only if they also honour the license under which they received the work; i.e. the contributions of all those whose code appears in LinCVS.
but it is surely not very ethical: LinCVS has had contributions from many others than the main developer. What do you think?
The LinCVS license has been problematic for a long time. It is a classic "GPL plus more restrictions" license. If anyone has contributed source under the GPL, the result is likely not redistributable at all. You can't simultaneously distribute under GPL (the only way to redistribute GPLed work), and apply more restrictions, without violating the license.
The maintainer of the Debian LinCVS package believes the program is legally redistributable, but non-free.
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=270461