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

Just so I'm clear: If a company wishes to contribute code
to TDF/LO, but wants their contributions to be triple-licensed
(alv2-mpl-lgplv3), they would be refused. Is that correct?
If so, what, exactly, is the reason?

tia!

On Mar 7, 2013, at 9:42 AM, Florian Effenberger <florian@effenberger.org> wrote:

> 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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