lemm.ee

3 points

3 months ago

Would be very difficult to switch licenses away from GPL3

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Possibly linux@lemmy.zip

4 points

3 months ago

They would need to do a private rewrite. Once again this is why you should never sign any kind of CLA. There isn’t a CLA here but it there were it would be a simple matter of them changing the license.

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ShortN0te@lemmy.ml

1 point

3 months ago

While true it is not impossible to relicense a software project.

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2 points

3 months ago

They would have to track down everyone who has ever contributed to the project and convince them to sign a CLA. Many/most would refuse, whose code they would have to rewrite from scratch without violating their copyright (meaning no copy-pasting).

It would be messy and extremely painful, and at the end of the process we’d still have Immich as it was before the license change available to fork and maintain ourselves.

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ShortN0te@lemmy.ml

1 point

3 months ago

They only need the biggest contributors. Small contributions like single line or even a few lines edits etc. are not eligible for copyright. Also minor contributions can be easily rewritten.

Most ppl you will get with a paycheck.

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1 point

3 months ago

… at which point we could still fork the project from before the license change and continue on our merry way.

If you expect ongoing maintenance, are you saying you feel entitled to the devs’ continuing work in perpetuity, and at no cost? Because that’s called slavery and we have laws against it.

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ShortN0te@lemmy.ml

1 point

3 months ago

If you expect ongoing maintenance, are you saying you feel entitled to the devs’ continuing work in perpetuity, and at no cost? Because that’s called slavery and we have laws against it.

Stop putting words in my mouth.

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2 points

3 months ago

I’m just trying to understand what you’re upset about. Immich is released under one of the most user-protecting licenses out there, without a CLA, and every communication from everyone on the dev team has emphatically committed to keeping it that way. You’re over here saying “yeah but they might change it some day” and sure, maybe, but it would be a gigantic pain in the ass, there’s no indication they plan to do so, and you could say the same thing about literally any other open source project. And even if they did change it, we’d still have the most recent GPL version to fork! What more could you possibly want? All that’s left is a guarantee of ongoing maintenance, which I’m sorry but you are not entitled to that.

Edit: and the best way to ensure ongoing maintenance is to fund the project. Devs gotta eat.

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