Hello,
I was talking about GPL vs AGPL, not BSD ;-)
As I could understand (I'm not english and some terms are not easy to me) ther are two major problems: one is the use of RC on commercial systems, and other is the developing of plugins and some other parts of RC.
Let me give an example: I need to write a plugin for authentication, because we use own authentication routines, and this code is not useful for nobody else. Also the code may be protected because some parts are developed by a software company. Under some licenses I never could use RC because if I use this plugin I have to relase all source and I can't because some parts have a commercial license (here are called commercial secrets and/or intellectual property). Is that I care about.
Some contributors like to release his code under very less protective licenses, like BSD, and others not, but "that's life" :-)
Best regards, Pedro
El 05/12/11 11:30, Georg C. F. Greve escribió:
Dear Pedro,
it is not clear to me how a license that explicitly says it is okay not to contribute back would increase the numbers of contributions back to Roundcube.
From our perspective as a commercial entity, we have contributed quite a bit of code for the 0.7 release, and might not have done that under a weaker license, as we prefer an even footing for all contributors.
So we would likely not agree to a less protective or balanced license.
That said, I don't think that is even a theoretical option. Roundcube incorporates some major third-party contributions under the GPL which are not easily relicensed, and obtaining permission from each and everyone one of the upstream contributors is likely an impossible undertaking.
You are of course welcome to re-write all those parts under a BSD license, but as a commercial entity we would probably hesitate to contribute to that effort.
Best regards, Georg