We just published an article about contribution agreements for free software projects from our president Richard Stallman. You should read it if you haven't already, but put briefly, it makes the point that organizations that collect contribution agreements for free software projects should not make that software proprietary, and recommends you ask for specific language in the contributor agreements you sign to ensure that your code is always available as free software.
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can.axis
13 years 29 weeks 8 hours 43 min ago
RTLinux, software patents and the GPL
In the case of RTLinux, maybe this could avoid the use of patent licenses... Am I wrong about this? Anyway, business practice seems bad for copyleft...
« RL: Could that potentially be used to block RTAI from being LGPL?
Yodaiken: RTLinux is released under the GPL. I have an agreement with Linus that nobody who uses RTLinux with Linux will have to pay royalties. And we're considering how other licenses are going to work out. I'm very much in favor of making sure that people who are doing GPL work or noncommercial research work don't have to go through any paperwork or pay. We're in the process of formalizing how that's going to work out so that we don't get into trouble later on. And this is an area that nobody knows how all these laws interact. But in the meantime, people who use the system, who use RTLinux, don't have anything to worry about -- there's a definite commitment there. »
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