licensing

51 views
Skip to first unread message

Keith Rarick

unread,
Oct 23, 2009, 4:49:21 AM10/23/09
to beansta...@googlegroups.com
How does everyone (especially contributors) feel about potentially
putting beanstalkd under the MIT license? There's been some interest
in using beanstalkd where the GPL might be unwelcome.

As far as I understand, relicensing is just a matter of getting
permission from all the copyright holders.

kr

Dustin

unread,
Oct 23, 2009, 11:36:01 AM10/23/09
to beanstalk-talk

On Oct 23, 1:49 am, Keith Rarick <k...@xph.us> wrote:
> How does everyone (especially contributors) feel about potentially
> putting beanstalkd under the MIT license? There's been some interest
> in using beanstalkd where the GPL might be unwelcome.

I think that would be quite beneficial. I've had a few
conversations where I've recommended beanstalkd but GPL has made it a
non-starter.

You can consider any of my contributions no-strings-attached
donations. I don't care much about licensing other than when it
hinders adoption.

Jeremy Hinegardner

unread,
Oct 23, 2009, 12:39:03 PM10/23/09
to beansta...@googlegroups.com

Not a problem for me either.

Do I even dare inquire about how 'the GPL might be unwelcome' ?

enjoy,

-jeremy

--
========================================================================
Jeremy Hinegardner jer...@hinegardner.org

Dustin

unread,
Oct 23, 2009, 3:03:34 PM10/23/09
to beanstalk-talk

On Oct 23, 9:39 am, Jeremy Hinegardner <jer...@hinegardner.org> wrote:

> Do I even dare inquire about how 'the GPL might be unwelcome' ?

Lots of companies are afraid of GPL. Specifically, afraid of having
a product that requires GPL.

There's good reason -- it's why it's called copyleft, afterall. MIT/
BSD/etc... is copycenter. :) When I write code and give it away it's
because I want to ensure the most people *can* use it. I have no
doubt someone, somewhere is using something I wrote in a closed-source
commercial product and it's making them money.

In practice, I've received contributions from companies doing this
sort of thing (some small, some very large). That these guys were
able to feel comfortable using my code with no obligation to
reciprocate has led to some really great contributions. :)

I'm hoping to avoid a philosophical argument. I think RMS and the
GPL have done great things for open source. Without someone pulling
so hard on that side, we wouldn't be approaching the wonderful
middle. :)

Keith Rarick

unread,
Oct 23, 2009, 5:59:18 PM10/23/09
to beansta...@googlegroups.com
On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 12:03 PM, Dustin <dsal...@gmail.com> wrote:
>  In practice, I've received contributions from companies doing this
> sort of thing (some small, some very large).  That these guys were
> able to feel comfortable using my code with no obligation to
> reciprocate has led to some really great contributions.  :)

Cool. For the record, I personally am fine with using MIT for all my
contributions to beanstalkd. Let's try to make the change. I'm aware
of the following copyright holders who have not yet stated a
preference (in order of number of lines contributed):

Philotic, Inc. (i.e. causes.com)
Graham Barr
Ask Bjørn Hansen
Antony Dovgal
goosmurf
Ludvig Ericson
Paul Annesley
Phil Ross
Erich
Johan Bergström

I'll ask Causes for its permission. I'd love it if everyone else
listed above could post a message saying whether or not you are
willing to license your contributions under the MIT license, or feel
free to continue the discussion if you have reservations or want
clarification on anything. After a couple of days, I'll follow up
individually with anyone who hasn't responded yet.

kr

Philip Ross

unread,
Oct 23, 2009, 6:23:22 PM10/23/09
to beansta...@googlegroups.com
2009/10/23 Keith Rarick <k...@xph.us>:

> I'll ask Causes for its permission. I'd love it if everyone else
> listed above could post a message saying whether or not you are
> willing to license your contributions under the MIT license, or feel
> free to continue the discussion if you have reservations or want
> clarification on anything. After a couple of days, I'll follow up
> individually with anyone who hasn't responded yet.

I'm willing for for my contributions to beanstalkd to be distributed
under the MIT license.

Do you have any plans to change the license for the Ruby
beanstalk-client to MIT as well?

Regards,

Phil

Keith Rarick

unread,
Oct 23, 2009, 6:50:27 PM10/23/09
to beansta...@googlegroups.com
On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 3:23 PM, Philip Ross <phil...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Do you have any plans to change the license for the Ruby
> beanstalk-client to MIT as well?

Yeah, I was going to wait until beanstalkd is taken care of, but it
shouldn't be much trouble. Here's the list of committers/copyright
holders:

Philotic, Inc.
Keith Rarick
Dustin Sallings
Phil Ross
Isaac Feliu

(I'm out of practice in ruby package maintenance, what is the best way
to release a gem these days? gemcutter.org? Kristján, are you still
interested/willing to be the maintainer?)

kr

Yun Huang Yong

unread,
Oct 23, 2009, 7:08:21 PM10/23/09
to beansta...@googlegroups.com
Keith Rarick wrote:
[snip contributor's list]

> I'll ask Causes for its permission. I'd love it if everyone else
> listed above could post a message saying whether or not you are
> willing to license your contributions under the MIT license, or feel

goosmurf here. :D Just fixed my git config to display my real name...

I'm fine with my contributions being distributed under the MIT license.

cheers,
yun

--
Yun Huang Yong
y...@nomitor.com ...nom nom nom
+61 408 131 419
--

Kristján Pétursson

unread,
Oct 23, 2009, 7:40:21 PM10/23/09
to beansta...@googlegroups.com
You may have noticed that I am only slightly more than completely absent, just too busy with other things. If anyone else would like to take over maintenance, give a shout.

Philip Ross

unread,
Oct 24, 2009, 3:39:33 PM10/24/09
to beansta...@googlegroups.com
2009/10/23 Keith Rarick <k...@xph.us>:

>
> On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 3:23 PM, Philip Ross <phil...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Do you have any plans to change the license for the Ruby
>> beanstalk-client to MIT as well?
>
> Yeah, I was going to wait until beanstalkd is taken care of, but it
> shouldn't be much trouble. Here's the list of committers/copyright
> holders:

For the record, I'm willing for for my contributions to
beanstalk-client to be distributed
under the MIT license too.

Regards,

Phil

Graham Barr

unread,
Oct 28, 2009, 6:14:42 PM10/28/09
to beanstalk-talk
I have no problem with the MIT license being applied to my
contributions

Graham.

Ask Bjørn Hansen

unread,
Oct 28, 2009, 6:23:05 PM10/28/09
to beanstalk-talk
On Oct 23, 1:49 am, Keith Rarick <k...@xph.us> wrote:
> How does everyone (especially contributors) feel about potentially
> putting beanstalkd under the MIT license?

I'm in favor of the world having better software, so naturally I
prefer the MIT license and would be delighted to have my contributions
licensed that way.


- ask

Paul Annesley

unread,
Oct 28, 2009, 8:16:10 PM10/28/09
to beanstalk-talk
On Oct 23, 7:49 pm, Keith Rarick <k...@xph.us> wrote:
> How does everyone (especially contributors) feel about potentially
> putting beanstalkd under the MIT license?

My pheanstalk PHP client is already MIT licensed, and I certainly give
permission to licence any of my current (a line or two of docs) and
future beanstalkd contributions under the same license.

I'm all for the simple and permissive nature of MIT, compared to the
beast that is GPL.

Cheers,
Paul

Erich

unread,
Oct 29, 2009, 12:38:58 AM10/29/09
to beanstalk-talk
MIT license is fine by me.

Regards,
Erich

Johan Bergström

unread,
Oct 29, 2009, 5:59:09 AM10/29/09
to beanstalk-talk
MIT sounds like a great idea.

/Johan

William McVey

unread,
Oct 29, 2009, 10:55:52 AM10/29/09
to beansta...@googlegroups.com
On Oct 23, 3:49 am, Keith Rarick <k...@xph.us> wrote:
>> How does everyone (especially contributors) feel about potentially
>> putting beanstalkd under the MIT license? There's been some interest
>> in using beanstalkd where the GPL might be unwelcome.

I'm not a contributor, but as an end user, it is *much* easier to get
approval from the powers that be to use a third party tool like
beanstalkd if it is covered under an MIT license rather than the GPL.
And GPL v3 is even harder than v2. If your goal with the software is
to get it widely used, moving it to an MIT based public license would
certainly help us in the corporate world.

-- William

Keith Rarick

unread,
Oct 31, 2009, 3:48:13 AM10/31/09
to beansta...@googlegroups.com
On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 1:49 AM, Keith Rarick <k...@xph.us> wrote:
> As far as I understand, relicensing is just a matter of getting
> permission from all the copyright holders.

An update: I have permission from everyone except Philotic. It seems
likely that they will grant permission, but no official word yet.
We're just waiting on them.

kr

Keith Rarick

unread,
Jan 20, 2012, 6:14:07 PM1/20/12
to beansta...@googlegroups.com
On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 12:48 AM, Keith Rarick <k...@xph.us> wrote:
> An update: I have permission from everyone except Philotic. It seems
> likely that they will grant permission, but no official word yet.
> We're just waiting on them.

Some good news. I just recently got permission from
causes.com to use the MIT license for its contributions,
so I'm going to try one more time to switch beanstalkd
from GPL to MIT. Since last time, we have several new
contributors, so I need to get permission from a few
more people.

The following people have made contributions under
the GPL and I don't have a record of having received
permission from them to use MIT:

Jon Cooper
Sebastien Estienne
Anthony Basile
Stephan Hofmockel
Ludvig Ericson
Daniel Olfelt
David Rasch
Noah Williamsson
Serafeim Zanikolas

I'd love it if those listed above could post a message here


saying whether or not you are willing to license your

contributions under the MIT license, or feel free to continue


the discussion if you have reservations or want clarification
on anything. After a couple of days, I'll follow up individually
with anyone who hasn't responded yet.

kr

Jon Cooper

unread,
Jan 20, 2012, 6:24:33 PM1/20/12
to beansta...@googlegroups.com
> An update: I have permission from everyone except Philotic. It seems
> likely that they will grant permission, but no official word yet.
> We're just waiting on them.

Some good news. I just recently got permission from
causes.com to use the MIT license for its contributions,
so I'm going to try one more time to switch beanstalkd
from GPL to MIT. Since last time, we have several new
contributors, so I need to get permission from a few
more people.

The following people have made contributions under
the GPL and I don't have a record of having received
permission from them to use MIT:

Jon Cooper

Permission granted.

Cheers,
Jon 

Jon Cooper

unread,
Jan 20, 2012, 6:27:03 PM1/20/12
to beansta...@googlegroups.com
Speaking of contributions --

My SASL authentication daemon is in good shape, but needs some testing versus a real production environment, or at least something similar.

If there's anyone that can help me set up an LDAP server and saslauthd talking to it on a VM, I'm happy to finish the daemon and put in a pull request. 

But I don't need to use it any more, and if no one cares, I'm going to abandon it, because I have no interest in spending any more time trying to get slapd and saslauthd to play nice.

Jon

Daniel Olfelt

unread,
Jan 20, 2012, 8:39:58 PM1/20/12
to beansta...@googlegroups.com

Feel free to license my contributions as MIT.

Daniel

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "beanstalk-talk" group.
To post to this group, send email to beansta...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to beanstalk-tal...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/beanstalk-talk?hl=en.

Ludvig Ericson

unread,
Jan 26, 2012, 8:34:31 AM1/26/12
to beansta...@googlegroups.com
I will allow it.

Serafeim Zanikolas

unread,
Jan 26, 2012, 12:20:45 PM1/26/12
to beansta...@googlegroups.com
On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 03:14:07PM -0800, Keith Rarick wrote [edited]:
> I'd love it if those listed above could post a message here saying whether
> or not you are willing to license your contributions under the MIT license

That's fine by me.

cheers,
sez

Keith Rarick

unread,
Jan 26, 2012, 5:38:15 PM1/26/12
to beansta...@googlegroups.com
It's done. http://git.io/c211fed

I got permission from everybody who still has contributions
in the code as of the commit linked above.

kr

Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages