Re: Re: [tdf-discuss] Dual licensing of patches and code

Hi Jim,

Jim Jagielski wrote on 2013-03-06 16:05:

> I have a patch which is written for LibreOffice. However,
> I want to provide that patch to LO under both LGPLv3 AND ALv2.
> Based *solely* on the fact that it is dual-licensed and
> nothing else, is such a patch acceptable.

as our licensing page states, in order to contribute to LibreOffice and 
be part of our community, we require a dual-license of MPL/LGPLv3+ for 
contributions, which gives everyone the benefit of the strong rights 
these licenses grant. From time to time, depending on the specific case 
and the quality of the code, we may use and merge other licensed pieces 
of code with compatible licenses. We examine each case, depending on its 
merits.

> And this is not a theoretical question. I have been
> approached by people and companies stating that
> they wish to help LO but want to provide their code
> patches also under ALv2 (for internal legal reasons)
> and have been told that TDF and LO refuses to accept such
> code/patches/etc *simply* because it is dual/triple/quadruple
> licensed under the ALv2
In theory, code under a triple license is just as acceptable. In 
practice, however, TDF has hundreds of affiliated developers working as 
a team together, doing the actual code review and acceptance work. There 
is a spectrum of developer opinion on your nurturing of a competing 
project. Many core developers may be less inclined to invest their time 
into significant, active assistance: mentoring, reviewing, finding code 
pointers, merging, back porting, and so on, for functionality that will 
not provide a distinctive value for LibreOffice.

So, while there may be many possible acceptable variations of inbound 
license and contributions, there are likely relational consequences of 
those choices that are hard to quantify. Having said that, all 
developers who want to contribute constructively to LibreOffice are 
welcome in our community, and we have a high degree of flexibility to 
fulfill their genuine needs. The best thing to do is just to point them 
to our developers list.

Florian

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