SourceForge terms changes, heads up

[Bob Friesenhahn]

You all may want to read the forthcoming SourceForge terms of use
changes at
"https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/sitelegal/wiki/Terms%20of%20Use".
Some of them are pretty huge.

A really huge change is that any uploaded code must use an
"OSI-Approved License".  This is the approach that Google took for its
hosted projects, but of course those projects were carefully screened
and often started from scratch.

Libtiff does not use an OSI-Approved License even though its license
uses various phrases and terms similar to some of the OSI-approved
licenses (close to http://opensource.org/licenses/historical.php).

There is a sort of waterfall effect from the new SourceForge policy.
For example, GraphicsMagick uses libtiff in its Windows binary builds
and also uses a bit of GPL/LGPL parts which require redistribution of
all source code and/or objects necessary to rebuild the software.
Since libtiff (and libjpeg, and maybe more) do not use an OSI-Approved
License it then becomes contrary to SourceForge terms to distribute
those parts via SourceForge, and (due to other license restrictions)
and therefore not really possible to distribute the software via
SourceForge.

Luckily, libtiff itself does not rely on SourceForge but it seems that
the SourceForge change in terms may impact users of libtiff and other
historical libraries which lack an OSI-Approved License.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen@..., http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
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[Graeme Gill]

Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> Luckily, libtiff itself does not rely on SourceForge but it seems that
> the SourceForge change in terms may impact users of libtiff and other
> historical libraries which lack an OSI-Approved License.

I guess then, that SourceForge will loose a lot of projects.

Graeme Gill.
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[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Wed, 7 Oct 2009, Graeme Gill wrote:

> Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
>> Luckily, libtiff itself does not rely on SourceForge but it seems that
>> the SourceForge change in terms may impact users of libtiff and other
>> historical libraries which lack an OSI-Approved License.
>
> I guess then, that SourceForge will loose a lot of projects.

In the past year SourceForge has been making a lot of changes which
are claimed to be on the open source developer's behalf, but are
clearly for some other purpose.  Suddenly certain types of
commercially-oriented software projects (e.g. "Enterprise Resource
Planning") became most of the "top" projects without any data to
support it.

The "OSI-Approved License" issue is now seeming quite minor to
compared to issues with other agreement text (which is maintained in a
live wiki).  The normal protection clauses of the package's license
need to be waived (as pertains to SourceForge and its many business
partners) in order to upload the software and you idemnify SourceForce
against any related loss such as a lawsuit.  Idemnify means you pay
all legal fees, costs, and awards due to a lawsuit.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen@..., http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
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[Ron-14]

On Tue, Oct 06, 2009 at 05:07:18PM -0500, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> You all may want to read the forthcoming SourceForge terms of use
> changes at
> "https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/sitelegal/wiki/Terms%20of%20Use".
> Some of them are pretty huge.
>
> A really huge change is that any uploaded code must use an
> "OSI-Approved License".

This could be doubly amusing in the light of:
http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2009/10/06/the-open-source-initiatives-corporate-status-is-suspended-a-caos-theory-qa/

  Ron


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