According to dot.KDE "This enables projects to ensure their legal maintainability, including important issues such as preserving the ability to re-license and certainty to have sufficient rights to enforce licences in court."
There is currently a debate about the reasons for this move over at Groklaw. PJ is of the belief that such a move is necessary in order to enforce copyrights on KDE. I fail to see the need here. It seems clear to me that any individual or group of developers are able to seek redress when their copyrights are violated without need of the Fiduciary License Agreement.
It seems to me that the main reason for the FLA is to allow for a change of license. (or re-license as stated by the dot.KDE release) Linus Torvalds has acknowledged that re-licensing the Linux kernel would be nearly impossible given the disparate copyright assignments of the various contributors to that project. On the other hand, given the fact that contributors to GNU must assign their copyrights to the FSF, it was not an issue to move GNU from GPL v2 to v3.
While assignment of the copyright to KDE e.V. under the FLA is voluntary, will we see a situation in the future where projects or contributions not on-board with the FLA are dropped from KDE?
Does the adoption of the FLV signify a future re-license to GPL v3? Or could it possibly lead to a proprietary KDE? How does the acquisition of Trolltech by Nokia come into play here if at all?
I am of the opinion that we have nothing to worry about for now. However we cannot predict what kinds of influences or future situations will affect KDE e.V. This allows a potential re-license of KDE by a relatively small group of people. Possibly even against the wishes of the original contributors.
What do you think?
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> I fail to see the need here.
It's ensure that in the event that a developer goes away (due to disinterest, death, or whatever) we can continue to protect and manage the code with the rest of the development team.
It's also to ensure that in the event of legal issues, such as a GPL violation, KDE e.V. may act on behalf of the contributors relieving them of the financial or other burden associated with such a task.
> While assignment of the copyright to KDE e.V. under the FLA
> is voluntary, will we see a situation in the future where
> projects or contributions not on-board with the FLA are
> dropped from KDE?
No.
> Does the adoption of the FLV signify a future re-license to
> GPL v3?
We've already done a relicensing to be GPL v3 compliant. The FLA has nothing to do with this.
> However we cannot predict what kinds of influences or
> future situations will affect KDE e.V.
First, it's highly unlikely that the e.V. would be anything but what it is now: a constituency made up of active KDE contributors.
However, should the worst happen, that is precisely why there is very clear definition of what is allowable via the FLA in an appendix document called the FRA. It prevents damage in the case of the unlikely event of the e.V. becoming corrupt.
> Possibly even against the wishes of the original
> contributors.
Not against the wishes of the original contributor at the time of signing (which is when the FRA is enacted).
> What do you think?
That KDE e.V. and the FSFE have the best interests of Free Software and Free Software developers in mind and have put considerable resources and a large number of good legal minds to the task of protecting the best interests of our developers.
All the issues you raise, and a lot more, were considered and solved. =)
Hope that helps you rest easier.
Thanks for your reply Aaron!
I was never really worried about KDE necessarily. I was trying to examine the potential future as it would relate to KDE (my DE of choice).
Thanks to you and the KDE team for the great work you do!