Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/09/11/gsoc-conservancy.html

[ A version of this post originally appeared
on the
Google Open Source Blog, and was cross-posted
on Conservancy’s
blog. ]

Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity that
serves as a home to Open Source and Free Software projects. Such is easily
said, but in this post I’d like to discuss what that means in practice for an
Open Source and Free Software project and why such projects need a
non-profit home. In short, a non-profit home makes the lives of Free
Software developers easier, because they have less work to do outside of
their area of focus (i.e., software development and documentation).

As the summer of 2014 ends, Google Summer of Code (GSoC) coordnation work exemplifies the value a non-profit home brings its Free
Software projects. GSoC
is likely the largest philanthropic program in the Open Source and Free
Software community today. However, one of the most difficult things for
organizations that seek to take advantage of such programs is the
administrative overhead necessary to take full advantage of the program.
Google invests heavily in making it easy for organizations to participate
in the program — such as by handling the details of stipend payments
to students directly. However, to take full advantage of any philanthropic
program, the benefiting organization has some work to do. For its member
projects, Conservancy is the organization that gets that logistical work
done.

For example, Google kindly donates $500 to the mentoring organization for
every student it mentors. However, these funds need to go
“somewhere”. If the funds go to an individual, there are two
inherent problems. First, that individual is responsible for taxes on that
income. Second, funds that belong to an organization as a whole are now in
the bank account of a single project leader. Conservancy solves both those
problems: as a tax-exempt charity, the mentor payments are available for
organizational use under its tax exemption. Furthermore, Conservancy
maintains earmarked funds for each of its projects. Thus, Conservancy
keeps the mentor funds for the Free Software project, and the project
leaders can later vote to make use of the funds in a manner that helps the
project and Conservancy’s charitable mission. Often, projects in
Conservancy use their mentor funds to send developers to important
conferences to speak about the project and recruit new developers and
users.

Meanwhile, Google also offers to pay travel expenses for two mentors from
each mentoring organization to attend the annual GSoC Mentor Summit (and,
this year, it’s an even bigger Reunion conference!). Conservancy handles
this work on behalf of its member projects in two directions. First, for
developers who don’t have a credit card or otherwise are unable to pay for
their own flight and receive reimbursement later, Conservancy staff book
the flights on Conservancy’s credit card. For the other travelers,
Conservancy handles the reimbursement details. On the back end of all of
this, Conservancy handles all the overhead annoyances and issues in
requesting the POs from Google, invoicing for the funds, and tracking to
ensure payment is made. While the Google staff is incredibly responsive
and helpful on these issues, the Googlers need someone on the project’s
side to take care of the details. That’s what Conservancy does.

GSoC coordination is just one of the many things that Conservancy does
every day for its member projects. If there’s anything other than software
development and documentation that you can imagine a project needs,
Conservancy does that job for its member projects. This includes not only
mundane items such as travel coordination, but also issues as complex as
trademark filings and defense, copyright licensing advice and enforcement,
governance coordination and mentoring, and fundraising for the projects.
Some of Conservancy’s member projects have been so successful in
Conservancy that they’ve been able to fund developer salaries — often
part-time but occasionally full-time — for years on end to allow them
to focus on improving the project’s software for the public benefit.

Finally, if your project seeks help with regard to handling its GSoC
funds and travel, or anything else mentioned
on Conservancy’s list
of services to member projects, Conservancy is welcoming
new applications for
membership. Your project could
join Conservancy’s more
than thirty other member projects and receive these wonderful services
to help your community grow and focus on its core mission of building
software for the public good.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/09/11/gsoc-conservancy.html

[ A version of this post originally appeared
on the
Google Open Source Blog, and was cross-posted
on Conservancy’s
blog. ]

Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity that
serves as a home to Open Source and Free Software projects. Such is easily
said, but in this post I’d like to discuss what that means in practice for an
Open Source and Free Software project and why such projects need a
non-profit home. In short, a non-profit home makes the lives of Free
Software developers easier, because they have less work to do outside of
their area of focus (i.e., software development and documentation).

As the summer of 2014 ends, Google Summer of Code (GSoC) coordnation work exemplifies the value a non-profit home brings its Free
Software projects. GSoC
is likely the largest philanthropic program in the Open Source and Free
Software community today. However, one of the most difficult things for
organizations that seek to take advantage of such programs is the
administrative overhead necessary to take full advantage of the program.
Google invests heavily in making it easy for organizations to participate
in the program — such as by handling the details of stipend payments
to students directly. However, to take full advantage of any philanthropic
program, the benefiting organization has some work to do. For its member
projects, Conservancy is the organization that gets that logistical work
done.

For example, Google kindly donates $500 to the mentoring organization for
every student it mentors. However, these funds need to go
“somewhere”. If the funds go to an individual, there are two
inherent problems. First, that individual is responsible for taxes on that
income. Second, funds that belong to an organization as a whole are now in
the bank account of a single project leader. Conservancy solves both those
problems: as a tax-exempt charity, the mentor payments are available for
organizational use under its tax exemption. Furthermore, Conservancy
maintains earmarked funds for each of its projects. Thus, Conservancy
keeps the mentor funds for the Free Software project, and the project
leaders can later vote to make use of the funds in a manner that helps the
project and Conservancy’s charitable mission. Often, projects in
Conservancy use their mentor funds to send developers to important
conferences to speak about the project and recruit new developers and
users.

Meanwhile, Google also offers to pay travel expenses for two mentors from
each mentoring organization to attend the annual GSoC Mentor Summit (and,
this year, it’s an even bigger Reunion conference!). Conservancy handles
this work on behalf of its member projects in two directions. First, for
developers who don’t have a credit card or otherwise are unable to pay for
their own flight and receive reimbursement later, Conservancy staff book
the flights on Conservancy’s credit card. For the other travelers,
Conservancy handles the reimbursement details. On the back end of all of
this, Conservancy handles all the overhead annoyances and issues in
requesting the POs from Google, invoicing for the funds, and tracking to
ensure payment is made. While the Google staff is incredibly responsive
and helpful on these issues, the Googlers need someone on the project’s
side to take care of the details. That’s what Conservancy does.

GSoC coordination is just one of the many things that Conservancy does
every day for its member projects. If there’s anything other than software
development and documentation that you can imagine a project needs,
Conservancy does that job for its member projects. This includes not only
mundane items such as travel coordination, but also issues as complex as
trademark filings and defense, copyright licensing advice and enforcement,
governance coordination and mentoring, and fundraising for the projects.
Some of Conservancy’s member projects have been so successful in
Conservancy that they’ve been able to fund developer salaries — often
part-time but occasionally full-time — for years on end to allow them
to focus on improving the project’s software for the public benefit.

Finally, if your project seeks help with regard to handling its GSoC
funds and travel, or anything else mentioned
on Conservancy’s list
of services to member projects, Conservancy is welcoming
new applications for
membership. Your project could
join Conservancy’s more
than thirty other member projects and receive these wonderful services
to help your community grow and focus on its core mission of building
software for the public good.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/09/11/gsoc-conservancy.html

[ A version of this post originally appeared
on the
Google Open Source Blog, and was cross-posted
on Conservancy’s
blog. ]

Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity that
serves as a home to Open Source and Free Software projects. Such is easily
said, but in this post I’d like to discuss what that means in practice for an
Open Source and Free Software project and why such projects need a
non-profit home. In short, a non-profit home makes the lives of Free
Software developers easier, because they have less work to do outside of
their area of focus (i.e., software development and documentation).

As the summer of 2014 ends, Google Summer of Code (GSoC) coordnation work exemplifies the value a non-profit home brings its Free
Software projects. GSoC
is likely the largest philanthropic program in the Open Source and Free
Software community today. However, one of the most difficult things for
organizations that seek to take advantage of such programs is the
administrative overhead necessary to take full advantage of the program.
Google invests heavily in making it easy for organizations to participate
in the program — such as by handling the details of stipend payments
to students directly. However, to take full advantage of any philanthropic
program, the benefiting organization has some work to do. For its member
projects, Conservancy is the organization that gets that logistical work
done.

For example, Google kindly donates $500 to the mentoring organization for
every student it mentors. However, these funds need to go
“somewhere”. If the funds go to an individual, there are two
inherent problems. First, that individual is responsible for taxes on that
income. Second, funds that belong to an organization as a whole are now in
the bank account of a single project leader. Conservancy solves both those
problems: as a tax-exempt charity, the mentor payments are available for
organizational use under its tax exemption. Furthermore, Conservancy
maintains earmarked funds for each of its projects. Thus, Conservancy
keeps the mentor funds for the Free Software project, and the project
leaders can later vote to make use of the funds in a manner that helps the
project and Conservancy’s charitable mission. Often, projects in
Conservancy use their mentor funds to send developers to important
conferences to speak about the project and recruit new developers and
users.

Meanwhile, Google also offers to pay travel expenses for two mentors from
each mentoring organization to attend the annual GSoC Mentor Summit (and,
this year, it’s an even bigger Reunion conference!). Conservancy handles
this work on behalf of its member projects in two directions. First, for
developers who don’t have a credit card or otherwise are unable to pay for
their own flight and receive reimbursement later, Conservancy staff book
the flights on Conservancy’s credit card. For the other travelers,
Conservancy handles the reimbursement details. On the back end of all of
this, Conservancy handles all the overhead annoyances and issues in
requesting the POs from Google, invoicing for the funds, and tracking to
ensure payment is made. While the Google staff is incredibly responsive
and helpful on these issues, the Googlers need someone on the project’s
side to take care of the details. That’s what Conservancy does.

GSoC coordination is just one of the many things that Conservancy does
every day for its member projects. If there’s anything other than software
development and documentation that you can imagine a project needs,
Conservancy does that job for its member projects. This includes not only
mundane items such as travel coordination, but also issues as complex as
trademark filings and defense, copyright licensing advice and enforcement,
governance coordination and mentoring, and fundraising for the projects.
Some of Conservancy’s member projects have been so successful in
Conservancy that they’ve been able to fund developer salaries — often
part-time but occasionally full-time — for years on end to allow them
to focus on improving the project’s software for the public benefit.

Finally, if your project seeks help with regard to handling its GSoC
funds and travel, or anything else mentioned
on Conservancy’s list
of services to member projects, Conservancy is welcoming
new applications for
membership. Your project could
join Conservancy’s more
than thirty other member projects and receive these wonderful services
to help your community grow and focus on its core mission of building
software for the public good.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/09/11/gsoc-conservancy.html

[ A version of this post originally appeared
on the
Google Open Source Blog, and was cross-posted
on Conservancy’s
blog. ]

Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity that
serves as a home to Open Source and Free Software projects. Such is easily
said, but in this post I’d like to discuss what that means in practice for an
Open Source and Free Software project and why such projects need a
non-profit home. In short, a non-profit home makes the lives of Free
Software developers easier, because they have less work to do outside of
their area of focus (i.e., software development and documentation).

As the summer of 2014 ends, Google Summer of Code (GSoC) coordnation work exemplifies the value a non-profit home brings its Free
Software projects. GSoC
is likely the largest philanthropic program in the Open Source and Free
Software community today. However, one of the most difficult things for
organizations that seek to take advantage of such programs is the
administrative overhead necessary to take full advantage of the program.
Google invests heavily in making it easy for organizations to participate
in the program — such as by handling the details of stipend payments
to students directly. However, to take full advantage of any philanthropic
program, the benefiting organization has some work to do. For its member
projects, Conservancy is the organization that gets that logistical work
done.

For example, Google kindly donates $500 to the mentoring organization for
every student it mentors. However, these funds need to go
“somewhere”. If the funds go to an individual, there are two
inherent problems. First, that individual is responsible for taxes on that
income. Second, funds that belong to an organization as a whole are now in
the bank account of a single project leader. Conservancy solves both those
problems: as a tax-exempt charity, the mentor payments are available for
organizational use under its tax exemption. Furthermore, Conservancy
maintains earmarked funds for each of its projects. Thus, Conservancy
keeps the mentor funds for the Free Software project, and the project
leaders can later vote to make use of the funds in a manner that helps the
project and Conservancy’s charitable mission. Often, projects in
Conservancy use their mentor funds to send developers to important
conferences to speak about the project and recruit new developers and
users.

Meanwhile, Google also offers to pay travel expenses for two mentors from
each mentoring organization to attend the annual GSoC Mentor Summit (and,
this year, it’s an even bigger Reunion conference!). Conservancy handles
this work on behalf of its member projects in two directions. First, for
developers who don’t have a credit card or otherwise are unable to pay for
their own flight and receive reimbursement later, Conservancy staff book
the flights on Conservancy’s credit card. For the other travelers,
Conservancy handles the reimbursement details. On the back end of all of
this, Conservancy handles all the overhead annoyances and issues in
requesting the POs from Google, invoicing for the funds, and tracking to
ensure payment is made. While the Google staff is incredibly responsive
and helpful on these issues, the Googlers need someone on the project’s
side to take care of the details. That’s what Conservancy does.

GSoC coordination is just one of the many things that Conservancy does
every day for its member projects. If there’s anything other than software
development and documentation that you can imagine a project needs,
Conservancy does that job for its member projects. This includes not only
mundane items such as travel coordination, but also issues as complex as
trademark filings and defense, copyright licensing advice and enforcement,
governance coordination and mentoring, and fundraising for the projects.
Some of Conservancy’s member projects have been so successful in
Conservancy that they’ve been able to fund developer salaries — often
part-time but occasionally full-time — for years on end to allow them
to focus on improving the project’s software for the public benefit.

Finally, if your project seeks help with regard to handling its GSoC
funds and travel, or anything else mentioned
on Conservancy’s list
of services to member projects, Conservancy is welcoming
new applications for
membership. Your project could
join Conservancy’s more
than thirty other member projects and receive these wonderful services
to help your community grow and focus on its core mission of building
software for the public good.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/09/11/gsoc-conservancy.html

[ A version of this post originally appeared
on the
Google Open Source Blog, and was cross-posted
on Conservancy’s
blog. ]

Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity that
serves as a home to Open Source and Free Software projects. Such is easily
said, but in this post I’d like to discuss what that means in practice for an
Open Source and Free Software project and why such projects need a
non-profit home. In short, a non-profit home makes the lives of Free
Software developers easier, because they have less work to do outside of
their area of focus (i.e., software development and documentation).

As the summer of 2014 ends, Google Summer of Code (GSoC) coordnation work exemplifies the value a non-profit home brings its Free
Software projects. GSoC
is likely the largest philanthropic program in the Open Source and Free
Software community today. However, one of the most difficult things for
organizations that seek to take advantage of such programs is the
administrative overhead necessary to take full advantage of the program.
Google invests heavily in making it easy for organizations to participate
in the program — such as by handling the details of stipend payments
to students directly. However, to take full advantage of any philanthropic
program, the benefiting organization has some work to do. For its member
projects, Conservancy is the organization that gets that logistical work
done.

For example, Google kindly donates $500 to the mentoring organization for
every student it mentors. However, these funds need to go
“somewhere”. If the funds go to an individual, there are two
inherent problems. First, that individual is responsible for taxes on that
income. Second, funds that belong to an organization as a whole are now in
the bank account of a single project leader. Conservancy solves both those
problems: as a tax-exempt charity, the mentor payments are available for
organizational use under its tax exemption. Furthermore, Conservancy
maintains earmarked funds for each of its projects. Thus, Conservancy
keeps the mentor funds for the Free Software project, and the project
leaders can later vote to make use of the funds in a manner that helps the
project and Conservancy’s charitable mission. Often, projects in
Conservancy use their mentor funds to send developers to important
conferences to speak about the project and recruit new developers and
users.

Meanwhile, Google also offers to pay travel expenses for two mentors from
each mentoring organization to attend the annual GSoC Mentor Summit (and,
this year, it’s an even bigger Reunion conference!). Conservancy handles
this work on behalf of its member projects in two directions. First, for
developers who don’t have a credit card or otherwise are unable to pay for
their own flight and receive reimbursement later, Conservancy staff book
the flights on Conservancy’s credit card. For the other travelers,
Conservancy handles the reimbursement details. On the back end of all of
this, Conservancy handles all the overhead annoyances and issues in
requesting the POs from Google, invoicing for the funds, and tracking to
ensure payment is made. While the Google staff is incredibly responsive
and helpful on these issues, the Googlers need someone on the project’s
side to take care of the details. That’s what Conservancy does.

GSoC coordination is just one of the many things that Conservancy does
every day for its member projects. If there’s anything other than software
development and documentation that you can imagine a project needs,
Conservancy does that job for its member projects. This includes not only
mundane items such as travel coordination, but also issues as complex as
trademark filings and defense, copyright licensing advice and enforcement,
governance coordination and mentoring, and fundraising for the projects.
Some of Conservancy’s member projects have been so successful in
Conservancy that they’ve been able to fund developer salaries — often
part-time but occasionally full-time — for years on end to allow them
to focus on improving the project’s software for the public benefit.

Finally, if your project seeks help with regard to handling its GSoC
funds and travel, or anything else mentioned
on Conservancy’s list
of services to member projects, Conservancy is welcoming
new applications for
membership. Your project could
join Conservancy’s more
than thirty other member projects and receive these wonderful services
to help your community grow and focus on its core mission of building
software for the public good.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/09/11/gsoc-conservancy.html

[ A version of this post originally appeared
on the
Google Open Source Blog, and was cross-posted
on Conservancy’s
blog. ]

Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity that
serves as a home to Open Source and Free Software projects. Such is easily
said, but in this post I’d like to discuss what that means in practice for an
Open Source and Free Software project and why such projects need a
non-profit home. In short, a non-profit home makes the lives of Free
Software developers easier, because they have less work to do outside of
their area of focus (i.e., software development and documentation).

As the summer of 2014 ends, Google Summer of Code (GSoC) coordnation work exemplifies the value a non-profit home brings its Free
Software projects. GSoC
is likely the largest philanthropic program in the Open Source and Free
Software community today. However, one of the most difficult things for
organizations that seek to take advantage of such programs is the
administrative overhead necessary to take full advantage of the program.
Google invests heavily in making it easy for organizations to participate
in the program — such as by handling the details of stipend payments
to students directly. However, to take full advantage of any philanthropic
program, the benefiting organization has some work to do. For its member
projects, Conservancy is the organization that gets that logistical work
done.

For example, Google kindly donates $500 to the mentoring organization for
every student it mentors. However, these funds need to go
“somewhere”. If the funds go to an individual, there are two
inherent problems. First, that individual is responsible for taxes on that
income. Second, funds that belong to an organization as a whole are now in
the bank account of a single project leader. Conservancy solves both those
problems: as a tax-exempt charity, the mentor payments are available for
organizational use under its tax exemption. Furthermore, Conservancy
maintains earmarked funds for each of its projects. Thus, Conservancy
keeps the mentor funds for the Free Software project, and the project
leaders can later vote to make use of the funds in a manner that helps the
project and Conservancy’s charitable mission. Often, projects in
Conservancy use their mentor funds to send developers to important
conferences to speak about the project and recruit new developers and
users.

Meanwhile, Google also offers to pay travel expenses for two mentors from
each mentoring organization to attend the annual GSoC Mentor Summit (and,
this year, it’s an even bigger Reunion conference!). Conservancy handles
this work on behalf of its member projects in two directions. First, for
developers who don’t have a credit card or otherwise are unable to pay for
their own flight and receive reimbursement later, Conservancy staff book
the flights on Conservancy’s credit card. For the other travelers,
Conservancy handles the reimbursement details. On the back end of all of
this, Conservancy handles all the overhead annoyances and issues in
requesting the POs from Google, invoicing for the funds, and tracking to
ensure payment is made. While the Google staff is incredibly responsive
and helpful on these issues, the Googlers need someone on the project’s
side to take care of the details. That’s what Conservancy does.

GSoC coordination is just one of the many things that Conservancy does
every day for its member projects. If there’s anything other than software
development and documentation that you can imagine a project needs,
Conservancy does that job for its member projects. This includes not only
mundane items such as travel coordination, but also issues as complex as
trademark filings and defense, copyright licensing advice and enforcement,
governance coordination and mentoring, and fundraising for the projects.
Some of Conservancy’s member projects have been so successful in
Conservancy that they’ve been able to fund developer salaries — often
part-time but occasionally full-time — for years on end to allow them
to focus on improving the project’s software for the public benefit.

Finally, if your project seeks help with regard to handling its GSoC
funds and travel, or anything else mentioned
on Conservancy’s list
of services to member projects, Conservancy is welcoming
new applications for
membership. Your project could
join Conservancy’s more
than thirty other member projects and receive these wonderful services
to help your community grow and focus on its core mission of building
software for the public good.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/09/11/gsoc-conservancy.html

[ A version of this post originally appeared
on the
Google Open Source Blog, and was cross-posted
on Conservancy’s
blog. ]

Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity that
serves as a home to Open Source and Free Software projects. Such is easily
said, but in this post I’d like to discuss what that means in practice for an
Open Source and Free Software project and why such projects need a
non-profit home. In short, a non-profit home makes the lives of Free
Software developers easier, because they have less work to do outside of
their area of focus (i.e., software development and documentation).

As the summer of 2014 ends, Google Summer of Code (GSoC) coordnation work exemplifies the value a non-profit home brings its Free
Software projects. GSoC
is likely the largest philanthropic program in the Open Source and Free
Software community today. However, one of the most difficult things for
organizations that seek to take advantage of such programs is the
administrative overhead necessary to take full advantage of the program.
Google invests heavily in making it easy for organizations to participate
in the program — such as by handling the details of stipend payments
to students directly. However, to take full advantage of any philanthropic
program, the benefiting organization has some work to do. For its member
projects, Conservancy is the organization that gets that logistical work
done.

For example, Google kindly donates $500 to the mentoring organization for
every student it mentors. However, these funds need to go
“somewhere”. If the funds go to an individual, there are two
inherent problems. First, that individual is responsible for taxes on that
income. Second, funds that belong to an organization as a whole are now in
the bank account of a single project leader. Conservancy solves both those
problems: as a tax-exempt charity, the mentor payments are available for
organizational use under its tax exemption. Furthermore, Conservancy
maintains earmarked funds for each of its projects. Thus, Conservancy
keeps the mentor funds for the Free Software project, and the project
leaders can later vote to make use of the funds in a manner that helps the
project and Conservancy’s charitable mission. Often, projects in
Conservancy use their mentor funds to send developers to important
conferences to speak about the project and recruit new developers and
users.

Meanwhile, Google also offers to pay travel expenses for two mentors from
each mentoring organization to attend the annual GSoC Mentor Summit (and,
this year, it’s an even bigger Reunion conference!). Conservancy handles
this work on behalf of its member projects in two directions. First, for
developers who don’t have a credit card or otherwise are unable to pay for
their own flight and receive reimbursement later, Conservancy staff book
the flights on Conservancy’s credit card. For the other travelers,
Conservancy handles the reimbursement details. On the back end of all of
this, Conservancy handles all the overhead annoyances and issues in
requesting the POs from Google, invoicing for the funds, and tracking to
ensure payment is made. While the Google staff is incredibly responsive
and helpful on these issues, the Googlers need someone on the project’s
side to take care of the details. That’s what Conservancy does.

GSoC coordination is just one of the many things that Conservancy does
every day for its member projects. If there’s anything other than software
development and documentation that you can imagine a project needs,
Conservancy does that job for its member projects. This includes not only
mundane items such as travel coordination, but also issues as complex as
trademark filings and defense, copyright licensing advice and enforcement,
governance coordination and mentoring, and fundraising for the projects.
Some of Conservancy’s member projects have been so successful in
Conservancy that they’ve been able to fund developer salaries — often
part-time but occasionally full-time — for years on end to allow them
to focus on improving the project’s software for the public benefit.

Finally, if your project seeks help with regard to handling its GSoC
funds and travel, or anything else mentioned
on Conservancy’s list
of services to member projects, Conservancy is welcoming
new applications for
membership. Your project could
join Conservancy’s more
than thirty other member projects and receive these wonderful services
to help your community grow and focus on its core mission of building
software for the public good.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/09/11/gsoc-conservancy.html

[ A version of this post originally appeared
on the
Google Open Source Blog, and was cross-posted
on Conservancy’s
blog. ]

Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity that
serves as a home to Open Source and Free Software projects. Such is easily
said, but in this post I’d like to discuss what that means in practice for an
Open Source and Free Software project and why such projects need a
non-profit home. In short, a non-profit home makes the lives of Free
Software developers easier, because they have less work to do outside of
their area of focus (i.e., software development and documentation).

As the summer of 2014 ends, Google Summer of Code (GSoC) coordnation work exemplifies the value a non-profit home brings its Free
Software projects. GSoC
is likely the largest philanthropic program in the Open Source and Free
Software community today. However, one of the most difficult things for
organizations that seek to take advantage of such programs is the
administrative overhead necessary to take full advantage of the program.
Google invests heavily in making it easy for organizations to participate
in the program — such as by handling the details of stipend payments
to students directly. However, to take full advantage of any philanthropic
program, the benefiting organization has some work to do. For its member
projects, Conservancy is the organization that gets that logistical work
done.

For example, Google kindly donates $500 to the mentoring organization for
every student it mentors. However, these funds need to go
“somewhere”. If the funds go to an individual, there are two
inherent problems. First, that individual is responsible for taxes on that
income. Second, funds that belong to an organization as a whole are now in
the bank account of a single project leader. Conservancy solves both those
problems: as a tax-exempt charity, the mentor payments are available for
organizational use under its tax exemption. Furthermore, Conservancy
maintains earmarked funds for each of its projects. Thus, Conservancy
keeps the mentor funds for the Free Software project, and the project
leaders can later vote to make use of the funds in a manner that helps the
project and Conservancy’s charitable mission. Often, projects in
Conservancy use their mentor funds to send developers to important
conferences to speak about the project and recruit new developers and
users.

Meanwhile, Google also offers to pay travel expenses for two mentors from
each mentoring organization to attend the annual GSoC Mentor Summit (and,
this year, it’s an even bigger Reunion conference!). Conservancy handles
this work on behalf of its member projects in two directions. First, for
developers who don’t have a credit card or otherwise are unable to pay for
their own flight and receive reimbursement later, Conservancy staff book
the flights on Conservancy’s credit card. For the other travelers,
Conservancy handles the reimbursement details. On the back end of all of
this, Conservancy handles all the overhead annoyances and issues in
requesting the POs from Google, invoicing for the funds, and tracking to
ensure payment is made. While the Google staff is incredibly responsive
and helpful on these issues, the Googlers need someone on the project’s
side to take care of the details. That’s what Conservancy does.

GSoC coordination is just one of the many things that Conservancy does
every day for its member projects. If there’s anything other than software
development and documentation that you can imagine a project needs,
Conservancy does that job for its member projects. This includes not only
mundane items such as travel coordination, but also issues as complex as
trademark filings and defense, copyright licensing advice and enforcement,
governance coordination and mentoring, and fundraising for the projects.
Some of Conservancy’s member projects have been so successful in
Conservancy that they’ve been able to fund developer salaries — often
part-time but occasionally full-time — for years on end to allow them
to focus on improving the project’s software for the public benefit.

Finally, if your project seeks help with regard to handling its GSoC
funds and travel, or anything else mentioned
on Conservancy’s list
of services to member projects, Conservancy is welcoming
new applications for
membership. Your project could
join Conservancy’s more
than thirty other member projects and receive these wonderful services
to help your community grow and focus on its core mission of building
software for the public good.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/09/11/gsoc-conservancy.html

[ A version of this post originally appeared
on the
Google Open Source Blog, and was cross-posted
on Conservancy’s
blog. ]

Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity that
serves as a home to Open Source and Free Software projects. Such is easily
said, but in this post I’d like to discuss what that means in practice for an
Open Source and Free Software project and why such projects need a
non-profit home. In short, a non-profit home makes the lives of Free
Software developers easier, because they have less work to do outside of
their area of focus (i.e., software development and documentation).

As the summer of 2014 ends, Google Summer of Code (GSoC) coordnation work exemplifies the value a non-profit home brings its Free
Software projects. GSoC
is likely the largest philanthropic program in the Open Source and Free
Software community today. However, one of the most difficult things for
organizations that seek to take advantage of such programs is the
administrative overhead necessary to take full advantage of the program.
Google invests heavily in making it easy for organizations to participate
in the program — such as by handling the details of stipend payments
to students directly. However, to take full advantage of any philanthropic
program, the benefiting organization has some work to do. For its member
projects, Conservancy is the organization that gets that logistical work
done.

For example, Google kindly donates $500 to the mentoring organization for
every student it mentors. However, these funds need to go
“somewhere”. If the funds go to an individual, there are two
inherent problems. First, that individual is responsible for taxes on that
income. Second, funds that belong to an organization as a whole are now in
the bank account of a single project leader. Conservancy solves both those
problems: as a tax-exempt charity, the mentor payments are available for
organizational use under its tax exemption. Furthermore, Conservancy
maintains earmarked funds for each of its projects. Thus, Conservancy
keeps the mentor funds for the Free Software project, and the project
leaders can later vote to make use of the funds in a manner that helps the
project and Conservancy’s charitable mission. Often, projects in
Conservancy use their mentor funds to send developers to important
conferences to speak about the project and recruit new developers and
users.

Meanwhile, Google also offers to pay travel expenses for two mentors from
each mentoring organization to attend the annual GSoC Mentor Summit (and,
this year, it’s an even bigger Reunion conference!). Conservancy handles
this work on behalf of its member projects in two directions. First, for
developers who don’t have a credit card or otherwise are unable to pay for
their own flight and receive reimbursement later, Conservancy staff book
the flights on Conservancy’s credit card. For the other travelers,
Conservancy handles the reimbursement details. On the back end of all of
this, Conservancy handles all the overhead annoyances and issues in
requesting the POs from Google, invoicing for the funds, and tracking to
ensure payment is made. While the Google staff is incredibly responsive
and helpful on these issues, the Googlers need someone on the project’s
side to take care of the details. That’s what Conservancy does.

GSoC coordination is just one of the many things that Conservancy does
every day for its member projects. If there’s anything other than software
development and documentation that you can imagine a project needs,
Conservancy does that job for its member projects. This includes not only
mundane items such as travel coordination, but also issues as complex as
trademark filings and defense, copyright licensing advice and enforcement,
governance coordination and mentoring, and fundraising for the projects.
Some of Conservancy’s member projects have been so successful in
Conservancy that they’ve been able to fund developer salaries — often
part-time but occasionally full-time — for years on end to allow them
to focus on improving the project’s software for the public benefit.

Finally, if your project seeks help with regard to handling its GSoC
funds and travel, or anything else mentioned
on Conservancy’s list
of services to member projects, Conservancy is welcoming
new applications for
membership. Your project could
join Conservancy’s more
than thirty other member projects and receive these wonderful services
to help your community grow and focus on its core mission of building
software for the public good.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/07/15/why-kallithea.html

[ This is a version of an essay
that I originally
published on Conservancy’s blog ].

Eleven days ago, Conservancy
announced
Kallithea. Kallithea is a GPLv3’d system for hosting and managing
Mercurial
and Git repositories on one’s own servers.
As Conservancy mentioned in its announcement, Kallithea is indeed based on
code released under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH. Below, I describe why I was
willing to participate in helping Conservancy become a non-profit home to
an obvious fork (as this is the first time Conservancy ever welcomed a fork
as a member project).

The primary impetus for Kallithea is that more recent versions of
RhodeCode GmbH’s codebase contain
a very
unorthodox and ambiguous license statement, which states:

(1) The Python code and integrated HTML are licensed under the GPLv3 license as
is RhodeCode itself.
(2) All other parts of the RhodeCode including, but not limited to the CSS code,
images, and design are licensed according to the license purchased.

Simply put, this licensing scheme is — either (a) a GPL violation, (b) an
unclear license permission statement under the GPL which leaves the
redistributor feeling unclear about their rights, or (c) both.

When members of the Mercurial community first brought this license to
my attention about ten months ago, my first focus was to form a
formal opinion regarding (a). Of course, I did form such an
opinion, and you can probably guess what that is. However, I realized a
few weeks later that this analysis really didn’t matter in this case; the
situation called for a more innovative solution.

Indeed, I recalled at that time
the disputes
between AT&T and University of California at Berkeley over BSD. In
that case, while nearly all of the BSD code was adjudicated as
freely licensed, the dispute itself was painful for the BSD
community. BSD’s development slowed nearly to a standstill for years while the
legal disagreement was resolved. Court action — even if
you’re in the right — isn’t always the fastest nor best way to push forward an
important Free Software project.

In the case of RhodeCode’s releases, there was an obvious and more
productive solution.
Namely, the
1.7.2 release of RhodeCode’s codebase, written primarily by Marcin
Kuzminski was fully released under GPLv3-only, and provided an
excellent starting point to begin a GPLv3’d fork. Furthermore, some of the
improved code in the 2.2.5 era of RhodeCode’s codebase were explicitly
licensed under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH itself. Finally, many volunteers
produced patches for all versions of RhodeCode’s codebase and released
those patches under GPLv3, too. Thus, there was already a burgeoning
GPLv3-friendly community yearning to begin.

My primary contribution, therefore, was to lead the process of vetting and
verifying a completely indisputable GPLv3’d version of the codebase. This
was extensive and time consuming work; I personally spent over 100 hours to
reach this point, and I suspect many Kallithea volunteers have already
spent that much and more. Ironically, the most complex part of the work so
far was verifying and organizing the licensing situation regarding
third-party Javascript (released under a myriad of various licenses). You
can see the details of that work by reading the revision history of
Kallithea (or, you can read an overview in
Kallithea’s
LICENSE file).

Like with any Free Software codebase fork, acrimony and disagreement led
to Kallithea’s creation. However, as the person who made most of the
early changesets for Kallithea, I want to thank RhodeCode GmbH
for explicitly releasing some of their work under GPLv3. Even as I hereby
reiterate publicly my previously private request that RhodeCode GmbH
correct the parts of their licensing scheme that are (at best) problematic,
and (at worst) GPL-violating, I also point out this simple fact to
those who have been heavily criticizing and admonishing RhodeCode GmbH: the
situation could be much worse! RhodeCode could have simply never
released
any of their code under the GPLv3 in the first place. After all,
there are many well-known code hosting sites that refuse to release any of
their code (or release only a pittance of small components). By contrast,
the GPLv3’d RhodeCode software was nearly a working system that helped
bootstrap the Kallithea community. I’m grateful for that, and I welcome
RhodeCode developers to contribute to Kallithea under GPLv3. I note,
of course, that RhodeCode developers sadly can’t incorporate any of our
improvements in their codebase, due to their problematic license. However,
I extend again my offer (also made privately last year) to work with
RhodeCode GmbH to correct its licensing problems.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/07/15/why-kallithea.html

[ This is a version of an essay
that I originally
published on Conservancy’s blog ].

Eleven days ago, Conservancy
announced
Kallithea. Kallithea is a GPLv3’d system for hosting and managing
Mercurial
and Git repositories on one’s own servers.
As Conservancy mentioned in its announcement, Kallithea is indeed based on
code released under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH. Below, I describe why I was
willing to participate in helping Conservancy become a non-profit home to
an obvious fork (as this is the first time Conservancy ever welcomed a fork
as a member project).

The primary impetus for Kallithea is that more recent versions of
RhodeCode GmbH’s codebase contain
a very
unorthodox and ambiguous license statement, which states:

(1) The Python code and integrated HTML are licensed under the GPLv3 license as
is RhodeCode itself.
(2) All other parts of the RhodeCode including, but not limited to the CSS code,
images, and design are licensed according to the license purchased.

Simply put, this licensing scheme is — either (a) a GPL violation, (b) an
unclear license permission statement under the GPL which leaves the
redistributor feeling unclear about their rights, or (c) both.

When members of the Mercurial community first brought this license to
my attention about ten months ago, my first focus was to form a
formal opinion regarding (a). Of course, I did form such an
opinion, and you can probably guess what that is. However, I realized a
few weeks later that this analysis really didn’t matter in this case; the
situation called for a more innovative solution.

Indeed, I recalled at that time
the disputes
between AT&T and University of California at Berkeley over BSD. In
that case, while nearly all of the BSD code was adjudicated as
freely licensed, the dispute itself was painful for the BSD
community. BSD’s development slowed nearly to a standstill for years while the
legal disagreement was resolved. Court action — even if
you’re in the right — isn’t always the fastest nor best way to push forward an
important Free Software project.

In the case of RhodeCode’s releases, there was an obvious and more
productive solution.
Namely, the
1.7.2 release of RhodeCode’s codebase, written primarily by Marcin
Kuzminski was fully released under GPLv3-only, and provided an
excellent starting point to begin a GPLv3’d fork. Furthermore, some of the
improved code in the 2.2.5 era of RhodeCode’s codebase were explicitly
licensed under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH itself. Finally, many volunteers
produced patches for all versions of RhodeCode’s codebase and released
those patches under GPLv3, too. Thus, there was already a burgeoning
GPLv3-friendly community yearning to begin.

My primary contribution, therefore, was to lead the process of vetting and
verifying a completely indisputable GPLv3’d version of the codebase. This
was extensive and time consuming work; I personally spent over 100 hours to
reach this point, and I suspect many Kallithea volunteers have already
spent that much and more. Ironically, the most complex part of the work so
far was verifying and organizing the licensing situation regarding
third-party Javascript (released under a myriad of various licenses). You
can see the details of that work by reading the revision history of
Kallithea (or, you can read an overview in
Kallithea’s
LICENSE file).

Like with any Free Software codebase fork, acrimony and disagreement led
to Kallithea’s creation. However, as the person who made most of the
early changesets for Kallithea, I want to thank RhodeCode GmbH
for explicitly releasing some of their work under GPLv3. Even as I hereby
reiterate publicly my previously private request that RhodeCode GmbH
correct the parts of their licensing scheme that are (at best) problematic,
and (at worst) GPL-violating, I also point out this simple fact to
those who have been heavily criticizing and admonishing RhodeCode GmbH: the
situation could be much worse! RhodeCode could have simply never
released
any of their code under the GPLv3 in the first place. After all,
there are many well-known code hosting sites that refuse to release any of
their code (or release only a pittance of small components). By contrast,
the GPLv3’d RhodeCode software was nearly a working system that helped
bootstrap the Kallithea community. I’m grateful for that, and I welcome
RhodeCode developers to contribute to Kallithea under GPLv3. I note,
of course, that RhodeCode developers sadly can’t incorporate any of our
improvements in their codebase, due to their problematic license. However,
I extend again my offer (also made privately last year) to work with
RhodeCode GmbH to correct its licensing problems.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/07/15/why-kallithea.html

[ This is a version of an essay
that I originally
published on Conservancy’s blog ].

Eleven days ago, Conservancy
announced
Kallithea. Kallithea is a GPLv3’d system for hosting and managing
Mercurial
and Git repositories on one’s own servers.
As Conservancy mentioned in its announcement, Kallithea is indeed based on
code released under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH. Below, I describe why I was
willing to participate in helping Conservancy become a non-profit home to
an obvious fork (as this is the first time Conservancy ever welcomed a fork
as a member project).

The primary impetus for Kallithea is that more recent versions of
RhodeCode GmbH’s codebase contain
a very
unorthodox and ambiguous license statement, which states:

(1) The Python code and integrated HTML are licensed under the GPLv3 license as
is RhodeCode itself.
(2) All other parts of the RhodeCode including, but not limited to the CSS code,
images, and design are licensed according to the license purchased.

Simply put, this licensing scheme is — either (a) a GPL violation, (b) an
unclear license permission statement under the GPL which leaves the
redistributor feeling unclear about their rights, or (c) both.

When members of the Mercurial community first brought this license to
my attention about ten months ago, my first focus was to form a
formal opinion regarding (a). Of course, I did form such an
opinion, and you can probably guess what that is. However, I realized a
few weeks later that this analysis really didn’t matter in this case; the
situation called for a more innovative solution.

Indeed, I recalled at that time
the disputes
between AT&T and University of California at Berkeley over BSD. In
that case, while nearly all of the BSD code was adjudicated as
freely licensed, the dispute itself was painful for the BSD
community. BSD’s development slowed nearly to a standstill for years while the
legal disagreement was resolved. Court action — even if
you’re in the right — isn’t always the fastest nor best way to push forward an
important Free Software project.

In the case of RhodeCode’s releases, there was an obvious and more
productive solution.
Namely, the
1.7.2 release of RhodeCode’s codebase, written primarily by Marcin
Kuzminski was fully released under GPLv3-only, and provided an
excellent starting point to begin a GPLv3’d fork. Furthermore, some of the
improved code in the 2.2.5 era of RhodeCode’s codebase were explicitly
licensed under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH itself. Finally, many volunteers
produced patches for all versions of RhodeCode’s codebase and released
those patches under GPLv3, too. Thus, there was already a burgeoning
GPLv3-friendly community yearning to begin.

My primary contribution, therefore, was to lead the process of vetting and
verifying a completely indisputable GPLv3’d version of the codebase. This
was extensive and time consuming work; I personally spent over 100 hours to
reach this point, and I suspect many Kallithea volunteers have already
spent that much and more. Ironically, the most complex part of the work so
far was verifying and organizing the licensing situation regarding
third-party Javascript (released under a myriad of various licenses). You
can see the details of that work by reading the revision history of
Kallithea (or, you can read an overview in
Kallithea’s
LICENSE file).

Like with any Free Software codebase fork, acrimony and disagreement led
to Kallithea’s creation. However, as the person who made most of the
early changesets for Kallithea, I want to thank RhodeCode GmbH
for explicitly releasing some of their work under GPLv3. Even as I hereby
reiterate publicly my previously private request that RhodeCode GmbH
correct the parts of their licensing scheme that are (at best) problematic,
and (at worst) GPL-violating, I also point out this simple fact to
those who have been heavily criticizing and admonishing RhodeCode GmbH: the
situation could be much worse! RhodeCode could have simply never
released
any of their code under the GPLv3 in the first place. After all,
there are many well-known code hosting sites that refuse to release any of
their code (or release only a pittance of small components). By contrast,
the GPLv3’d RhodeCode software was nearly a working system that helped
bootstrap the Kallithea community. I’m grateful for that, and I welcome
RhodeCode developers to contribute to Kallithea under GPLv3. I note,
of course, that RhodeCode developers sadly can’t incorporate any of our
improvements in their codebase, due to their problematic license. However,
I extend again my offer (also made privately last year) to work with
RhodeCode GmbH to correct its licensing problems.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/07/15/why-kallithea.html

[ This is a version of an essay
that I originally
published on Conservancy’s blog ].

Eleven days ago, Conservancy
announced
Kallithea. Kallithea is a GPLv3’d system for hosting and managing
Mercurial
and Git repositories on one’s own servers.
As Conservancy mentioned in its announcement, Kallithea is indeed based on
code released under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH. Below, I describe why I was
willing to participate in helping Conservancy become a non-profit home to
an obvious fork (as this is the first time Conservancy ever welcomed a fork
as a member project).

The primary impetus for Kallithea is that more recent versions of
RhodeCode GmbH’s codebase contain
a very
unorthodox and ambiguous license statement, which states:

(1) The Python code and integrated HTML are licensed under the GPLv3 license as
is RhodeCode itself.
(2) All other parts of the RhodeCode including, but not limited to the CSS code,
images, and design are licensed according to the license purchased.

Simply put, this licensing scheme is — either (a) a GPL violation, (b) an
unclear license permission statement under the GPL which leaves the
redistributor feeling unclear about their rights, or (c) both.

When members of the Mercurial community first brought this license to
my attention about ten months ago, my first focus was to form a
formal opinion regarding (a). Of course, I did form such an
opinion, and you can probably guess what that is. However, I realized a
few weeks later that this analysis really didn’t matter in this case; the
situation called for a more innovative solution.

Indeed, I recalled at that time
the disputes
between AT&T and University of California at Berkeley over BSD. In
that case, while nearly all of the BSD code was adjudicated as
freely licensed, the dispute itself was painful for the BSD
community. BSD’s development slowed nearly to a standstill for years while the
legal disagreement was resolved. Court action — even if
you’re in the right — isn’t always the fastest nor best way to push forward an
important Free Software project.

In the case of RhodeCode’s releases, there was an obvious and more
productive solution.
Namely, the
1.7.2 release of RhodeCode’s codebase, written primarily by Marcin
Kuzminski was fully released under GPLv3-only, and provided an
excellent starting point to begin a GPLv3’d fork. Furthermore, some of the
improved code in the 2.2.5 era of RhodeCode’s codebase were explicitly
licensed under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH itself. Finally, many volunteers
produced patches for all versions of RhodeCode’s codebase and released
those patches under GPLv3, too. Thus, there was already a burgeoning
GPLv3-friendly community yearning to begin.

My primary contribution, therefore, was to lead the process of vetting and
verifying a completely indisputable GPLv3’d version of the codebase. This
was extensive and time consuming work; I personally spent over 100 hours to
reach this point, and I suspect many Kallithea volunteers have already
spent that much and more. Ironically, the most complex part of the work so
far was verifying and organizing the licensing situation regarding
third-party Javascript (released under a myriad of various licenses). You
can see the details of that work by reading the revision history of
Kallithea (or, you can read an overview in
Kallithea’s
LICENSE file).

Like with any Free Software codebase fork, acrimony and disagreement led
to Kallithea’s creation. However, as the person who made most of the
early changesets for Kallithea, I want to thank RhodeCode GmbH
for explicitly releasing some of their work under GPLv3. Even as I hereby
reiterate publicly my previously private request that RhodeCode GmbH
correct the parts of their licensing scheme that are (at best) problematic,
and (at worst) GPL-violating, I also point out this simple fact to
those who have been heavily criticizing and admonishing RhodeCode GmbH: the
situation could be much worse! RhodeCode could have simply never
released
any of their code under the GPLv3 in the first place. After all,
there are many well-known code hosting sites that refuse to release any of
their code (or release only a pittance of small components). By contrast,
the GPLv3’d RhodeCode software was nearly a working system that helped
bootstrap the Kallithea community. I’m grateful for that, and I welcome
RhodeCode developers to contribute to Kallithea under GPLv3. I note,
of course, that RhodeCode developers sadly can’t incorporate any of our
improvements in their codebase, due to their problematic license. However,
I extend again my offer (also made privately last year) to work with
RhodeCode GmbH to correct its licensing problems.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/07/15/why-kallithea.html

[ This is a version of an essay
that I originally
published on Conservancy’s blog ].

Eleven days ago, Conservancy
announced
Kallithea. Kallithea is a GPLv3’d system for hosting and managing
Mercurial
and Git repositories on one’s own servers.
As Conservancy mentioned in its announcement, Kallithea is indeed based on
code released under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH. Below, I describe why I was
willing to participate in helping Conservancy become a non-profit home to
an obvious fork (as this is the first time Conservancy ever welcomed a fork
as a member project).

The primary impetus for Kallithea is that more recent versions of
RhodeCode GmbH’s codebase contain
a very
unorthodox and ambiguous license statement, which states:

(1) The Python code and integrated HTML are licensed under the GPLv3 license as
is RhodeCode itself.
(2) All other parts of the RhodeCode including, but not limited to the CSS code,
images, and design are licensed according to the license purchased.

Simply put, this licensing scheme is — either (a) a GPL violation, (b) an
unclear license permission statement under the GPL which leaves the
redistributor feeling unclear about their rights, or (c) both.

When members of the Mercurial community first brought this license to
my attention about ten months ago, my first focus was to form a
formal opinion regarding (a). Of course, I did form such an
opinion, and you can probably guess what that is. However, I realized a
few weeks later that this analysis really didn’t matter in this case; the
situation called for a more innovative solution.

Indeed, I recalled at that time
the disputes
between AT&T and University of California at Berkeley over BSD. In
that case, while nearly all of the BSD code was adjudicated as
freely licensed, the dispute itself was painful for the BSD
community. BSD’s development slowed nearly to a standstill for years while the
legal disagreement was resolved. Court action — even if
you’re in the right — isn’t always the fastest nor best way to push forward an
important Free Software project.

In the case of RhodeCode’s releases, there was an obvious and more
productive solution.
Namely, the
1.7.2 release of RhodeCode’s codebase, written primarily by Marcin
Kuzminski was fully released under GPLv3-only, and provided an
excellent starting point to begin a GPLv3’d fork. Furthermore, some of the
improved code in the 2.2.5 era of RhodeCode’s codebase were explicitly
licensed under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH itself. Finally, many volunteers
produced patches for all versions of RhodeCode’s codebase and released
those patches under GPLv3, too. Thus, there was already a burgeoning
GPLv3-friendly community yearning to begin.

My primary contribution, therefore, was to lead the process of vetting and
verifying a completely indisputable GPLv3’d version of the codebase. This
was extensive and time consuming work; I personally spent over 100 hours to
reach this point, and I suspect many Kallithea volunteers have already
spent that much and more. Ironically, the most complex part of the work so
far was verifying and organizing the licensing situation regarding
third-party Javascript (released under a myriad of various licenses). You
can see the details of that work by reading the revision history of
Kallithea (or, you can read an overview in
Kallithea’s
LICENSE file).

Like with any Free Software codebase fork, acrimony and disagreement led
to Kallithea’s creation. However, as the person who made most of the
early changesets for Kallithea, I want to thank RhodeCode GmbH
for explicitly releasing some of their work under GPLv3. Even as I hereby
reiterate publicly my previously private request that RhodeCode GmbH
correct the parts of their licensing scheme that are (at best) problematic,
and (at worst) GPL-violating, I also point out this simple fact to
those who have been heavily criticizing and admonishing RhodeCode GmbH: the
situation could be much worse! RhodeCode could have simply never
released
any of their code under the GPLv3 in the first place. After all,
there are many well-known code hosting sites that refuse to release any of
their code (or release only a pittance of small components). By contrast,
the GPLv3’d RhodeCode software was nearly a working system that helped
bootstrap the Kallithea community. I’m grateful for that, and I welcome
RhodeCode developers to contribute to Kallithea under GPLv3. I note,
of course, that RhodeCode developers sadly can’t incorporate any of our
improvements in their codebase, due to their problematic license. However,
I extend again my offer (also made privately last year) to work with
RhodeCode GmbH to correct its licensing problems.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/07/15/why-kallithea.html

[ This is a version of an essay
that I originally
published on Conservancy’s blog ].

Eleven days ago, Conservancy
announced
Kallithea. Kallithea is a GPLv3’d system for hosting and managing
Mercurial
and Git repositories on one’s own servers.
As Conservancy mentioned in its announcement, Kallithea is indeed based on
code released under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH. Below, I describe why I was
willing to participate in helping Conservancy become a non-profit home to
an obvious fork (as this is the first time Conservancy ever welcomed a fork
as a member project).

The primary impetus for Kallithea is that more recent versions of
RhodeCode GmbH’s codebase contain
a very
unorthodox and ambiguous license statement, which states:

(1) The Python code and integrated HTML are licensed under the GPLv3 license as
is RhodeCode itself.
(2) All other parts of the RhodeCode including, but not limited to the CSS code,
images, and design are licensed according to the license purchased.

Simply put, this licensing scheme is — either (a) a GPL violation, (b) an
unclear license permission statement under the GPL which leaves the
redistributor feeling unclear about their rights, or (c) both.

When members of the Mercurial community first brought this license to
my attention about ten months ago, my first focus was to form a
formal opinion regarding (a). Of course, I did form such an
opinion, and you can probably guess what that is. However, I realized a
few weeks later that this analysis really didn’t matter in this case; the
situation called for a more innovative solution.

Indeed, I recalled at that time
the disputes
between AT&T and University of California at Berkeley over BSD. In
that case, while nearly all of the BSD code was adjudicated as
freely licensed, the dispute itself was painful for the BSD
community. BSD’s development slowed nearly to a standstill for years while the
legal disagreement was resolved. Court action — even if
you’re in the right — isn’t always the fastest nor best way to push forward an
important Free Software project.

In the case of RhodeCode’s releases, there was an obvious and more
productive solution.
Namely, the
1.7.2 release of RhodeCode’s codebase, written primarily by Marcin
Kuzminski was fully released under GPLv3-only, and provided an
excellent starting point to begin a GPLv3’d fork. Furthermore, some of the
improved code in the 2.2.5 era of RhodeCode’s codebase were explicitly
licensed under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH itself. Finally, many volunteers
produced patches for all versions of RhodeCode’s codebase and released
those patches under GPLv3, too. Thus, there was already a burgeoning
GPLv3-friendly community yearning to begin.

My primary contribution, therefore, was to lead the process of vetting and
verifying a completely indisputable GPLv3’d version of the codebase. This
was extensive and time consuming work; I personally spent over 100 hours to
reach this point, and I suspect many Kallithea volunteers have already
spent that much and more. Ironically, the most complex part of the work so
far was verifying and organizing the licensing situation regarding
third-party Javascript (released under a myriad of various licenses). You
can see the details of that work by reading the revision history of
Kallithea (or, you can read an overview in
Kallithea’s
LICENSE file).

Like with any Free Software codebase fork, acrimony and disagreement led
to Kallithea’s creation. However, as the person who made most of the
early changesets for Kallithea, I want to thank RhodeCode GmbH
for explicitly releasing some of their work under GPLv3. Even as I hereby
reiterate publicly my previously private request that RhodeCode GmbH
correct the parts of their licensing scheme that are (at best) problematic,
and (at worst) GPL-violating, I also point out this simple fact to
those who have been heavily criticizing and admonishing RhodeCode GmbH: the
situation could be much worse! RhodeCode could have simply never
released
any of their code under the GPLv3 in the first place. After all,
there are many well-known code hosting sites that refuse to release any of
their code (or release only a pittance of small components). By contrast,
the GPLv3’d RhodeCode software was nearly a working system that helped
bootstrap the Kallithea community. I’m grateful for that, and I welcome
RhodeCode developers to contribute to Kallithea under GPLv3. I note,
of course, that RhodeCode developers sadly can’t incorporate any of our
improvements in their codebase, due to their problematic license. However,
I extend again my offer (also made privately last year) to work with
RhodeCode GmbH to correct its licensing problems.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/07/15/why-kallithea.html

[ This is a version of an essay
that I originally
published on Conservancy’s blog ].

Eleven days ago, Conservancy
announced
Kallithea. Kallithea is a GPLv3’d system for hosting and managing
Mercurial
and Git repositories on one’s own servers.
As Conservancy mentioned in its announcement, Kallithea is indeed based on
code released under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH. Below, I describe why I was
willing to participate in helping Conservancy become a non-profit home to
an obvious fork (as this is the first time Conservancy ever welcomed a fork
as a member project).

The primary impetus for Kallithea is that more recent versions of
RhodeCode GmbH’s codebase contain
a very
unorthodox and ambiguous license statement, which states:

(1) The Python code and integrated HTML are licensed under the GPLv3 license as
is RhodeCode itself.
(2) All other parts of the RhodeCode including, but not limited to the CSS code,
images, and design are licensed according to the license purchased.

Simply put, this licensing scheme is — either (a) a GPL violation, (b) an
unclear license permission statement under the GPL which leaves the
redistributor feeling unclear about their rights, or (c) both.

When members of the Mercurial community first brought this license to
my attention about ten months ago, my first focus was to form a
formal opinion regarding (a). Of course, I did form such an
opinion, and you can probably guess what that is. However, I realized a
few weeks later that this analysis really didn’t matter in this case; the
situation called for a more innovative solution.

Indeed, I recalled at that time
the disputes
between AT&T and University of California at Berkeley over BSD. In
that case, while nearly all of the BSD code was adjudicated as
freely licensed, the dispute itself was painful for the BSD
community. BSD’s development slowed nearly to a standstill for years while the
legal disagreement was resolved. Court action — even if
you’re in the right — isn’t always the fastest nor best way to push forward an
important Free Software project.

In the case of RhodeCode’s releases, there was an obvious and more
productive solution.
Namely, the
1.7.2 release of RhodeCode’s codebase, written primarily by Marcin
Kuzminski was fully released under GPLv3-only, and provided an
excellent starting point to begin a GPLv3’d fork. Furthermore, some of the
improved code in the 2.2.5 era of RhodeCode’s codebase were explicitly
licensed under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH itself. Finally, many volunteers
produced patches for all versions of RhodeCode’s codebase and released
those patches under GPLv3, too. Thus, there was already a burgeoning
GPLv3-friendly community yearning to begin.

My primary contribution, therefore, was to lead the process of vetting and
verifying a completely indisputable GPLv3’d version of the codebase. This
was extensive and time consuming work; I personally spent over 100 hours to
reach this point, and I suspect many Kallithea volunteers have already
spent that much and more. Ironically, the most complex part of the work so
far was verifying and organizing the licensing situation regarding
third-party Javascript (released under a myriad of various licenses). You
can see the details of that work by reading the revision history of
Kallithea (or, you can read an overview in
Kallithea’s
LICENSE file).

Like with any Free Software codebase fork, acrimony and disagreement led
to Kallithea’s creation. However, as the person who made most of the
early changesets for Kallithea, I want to thank RhodeCode GmbH
for explicitly releasing some of their work under GPLv3. Even as I hereby
reiterate publicly my previously private request that RhodeCode GmbH
correct the parts of their licensing scheme that are (at best) problematic,
and (at worst) GPL-violating, I also point out this simple fact to
those who have been heavily criticizing and admonishing RhodeCode GmbH: the
situation could be much worse! RhodeCode could have simply never
released
any of their code under the GPLv3 in the first place. After all,
there are many well-known code hosting sites that refuse to release any of
their code (or release only a pittance of small components). By contrast,
the GPLv3’d RhodeCode software was nearly a working system that helped
bootstrap the Kallithea community. I’m grateful for that, and I welcome
RhodeCode developers to contribute to Kallithea under GPLv3. I note,
of course, that RhodeCode developers sadly can’t incorporate any of our
improvements in their codebase, due to their problematic license. However,
I extend again my offer (also made privately last year) to work with
RhodeCode GmbH to correct its licensing problems.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/07/15/why-kallithea.html

[ This is a version of an essay
that I originally
published on Conservancy’s blog ].

Eleven days ago, Conservancy
announced
Kallithea. Kallithea is a GPLv3’d system for hosting and managing
Mercurial
and Git repositories on one’s own servers.
As Conservancy mentioned in its announcement, Kallithea is indeed based on
code released under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH. Below, I describe why I was
willing to participate in helping Conservancy become a non-profit home to
an obvious fork (as this is the first time Conservancy ever welcomed a fork
as a member project).

The primary impetus for Kallithea is that more recent versions of
RhodeCode GmbH’s codebase contain
a very
unorthodox and ambiguous license statement, which states:

(1) The Python code and integrated HTML are licensed under the GPLv3 license as
is RhodeCode itself.
(2) All other parts of the RhodeCode including, but not limited to the CSS code,
images, and design are licensed according to the license purchased.

Simply put, this licensing scheme is — either (a) a GPL violation, (b) an
unclear license permission statement under the GPL which leaves the
redistributor feeling unclear about their rights, or (c) both.

When members of the Mercurial community first brought this license to
my attention about ten months ago, my first focus was to form a
formal opinion regarding (a). Of course, I did form such an
opinion, and you can probably guess what that is. However, I realized a
few weeks later that this analysis really didn’t matter in this case; the
situation called for a more innovative solution.

Indeed, I recalled at that time
the disputes
between AT&T and University of California at Berkeley over BSD. In
that case, while nearly all of the BSD code was adjudicated as
freely licensed, the dispute itself was painful for the BSD
community. BSD’s development slowed nearly to a standstill for years while the
legal disagreement was resolved. Court action — even if
you’re in the right — isn’t always the fastest nor best way to push forward an
important Free Software project.

In the case of RhodeCode’s releases, there was an obvious and more
productive solution.
Namely, the
1.7.2 release of RhodeCode’s codebase, written primarily by Marcin
Kuzminski was fully released under GPLv3-only, and provided an
excellent starting point to begin a GPLv3’d fork. Furthermore, some of the
improved code in the 2.2.5 era of RhodeCode’s codebase were explicitly
licensed under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH itself. Finally, many volunteers
produced patches for all versions of RhodeCode’s codebase and released
those patches under GPLv3, too. Thus, there was already a burgeoning
GPLv3-friendly community yearning to begin.

My primary contribution, therefore, was to lead the process of vetting and
verifying a completely indisputable GPLv3’d version of the codebase. This
was extensive and time consuming work; I personally spent over 100 hours to
reach this point, and I suspect many Kallithea volunteers have already
spent that much and more. Ironically, the most complex part of the work so
far was verifying and organizing the licensing situation regarding
third-party Javascript (released under a myriad of various licenses). You
can see the details of that work by reading the revision history of
Kallithea (or, you can read an overview in
Kallithea’s
LICENSE file).

Like with any Free Software codebase fork, acrimony and disagreement led
to Kallithea’s creation. However, as the person who made most of the
early changesets for Kallithea, I want to thank RhodeCode GmbH
for explicitly releasing some of their work under GPLv3. Even as I hereby
reiterate publicly my previously private request that RhodeCode GmbH
correct the parts of their licensing scheme that are (at best) problematic,
and (at worst) GPL-violating, I also point out this simple fact to
those who have been heavily criticizing and admonishing RhodeCode GmbH: the
situation could be much worse! RhodeCode could have simply never
released
any of their code under the GPLv3 in the first place. After all,
there are many well-known code hosting sites that refuse to release any of
their code (or release only a pittance of small components). By contrast,
the GPLv3’d RhodeCode software was nearly a working system that helped
bootstrap the Kallithea community. I’m grateful for that, and I welcome
RhodeCode developers to contribute to Kallithea under GPLv3. I note,
of course, that RhodeCode developers sadly can’t incorporate any of our
improvements in their codebase, due to their problematic license. However,
I extend again my offer (also made privately last year) to work with
RhodeCode GmbH to correct its licensing problems.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/07/15/why-kallithea.html

[ This is a version of an essay
that I originally
published on Conservancy’s blog ].

Eleven days ago, Conservancy
announced
Kallithea. Kallithea is a GPLv3’d system for hosting and managing
Mercurial
and Git repositories on one’s own servers.
As Conservancy mentioned in its announcement, Kallithea is indeed based on
code released under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH. Below, I describe why I was
willing to participate in helping Conservancy become a non-profit home to
an obvious fork (as this is the first time Conservancy ever welcomed a fork
as a member project).

The primary impetus for Kallithea is that more recent versions of
RhodeCode GmbH’s codebase contain
a very
unorthodox and ambiguous license statement, which states:

(1) The Python code and integrated HTML are licensed under the GPLv3 license as
is RhodeCode itself.
(2) All other parts of the RhodeCode including, but not limited to the CSS code,
images, and design are licensed according to the license purchased.

Simply put, this licensing scheme is — either (a) a GPL violation, (b) an
unclear license permission statement under the GPL which leaves the
redistributor feeling unclear about their rights, or (c) both.

When members of the Mercurial community first brought this license to
my attention about ten months ago, my first focus was to form a
formal opinion regarding (a). Of course, I did form such an
opinion, and you can probably guess what that is. However, I realized a
few weeks later that this analysis really didn’t matter in this case; the
situation called for a more innovative solution.

Indeed, I recalled at that time
the disputes
between AT&T and University of California at Berkeley over BSD. In
that case, while nearly all of the BSD code was adjudicated as
freely licensed, the dispute itself was painful for the BSD
community. BSD’s development slowed nearly to a standstill for years while the
legal disagreement was resolved. Court action — even if
you’re in the right — isn’t always the fastest nor best way to push forward an
important Free Software project.

In the case of RhodeCode’s releases, there was an obvious and more
productive solution.
Namely, the
1.7.2 release of RhodeCode’s codebase, written primarily by Marcin
Kuzminski was fully released under GPLv3-only, and provided an
excellent starting point to begin a GPLv3’d fork. Furthermore, some of the
improved code in the 2.2.5 era of RhodeCode’s codebase were explicitly
licensed under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH itself. Finally, many volunteers
produced patches for all versions of RhodeCode’s codebase and released
those patches under GPLv3, too. Thus, there was already a burgeoning
GPLv3-friendly community yearning to begin.

My primary contribution, therefore, was to lead the process of vetting and
verifying a completely indisputable GPLv3’d version of the codebase. This
was extensive and time consuming work; I personally spent over 100 hours to
reach this point, and I suspect many Kallithea volunteers have already
spent that much and more. Ironically, the most complex part of the work so
far was verifying and organizing the licensing situation regarding
third-party Javascript (released under a myriad of various licenses). You
can see the details of that work by reading the revision history of
Kallithea (or, you can read an overview in
Kallithea’s
LICENSE file).

Like with any Free Software codebase fork, acrimony and disagreement led
to Kallithea’s creation. However, as the person who made most of the
early changesets for Kallithea, I want to thank RhodeCode GmbH
for explicitly releasing some of their work under GPLv3. Even as I hereby
reiterate publicly my previously private request that RhodeCode GmbH
correct the parts of their licensing scheme that are (at best) problematic,
and (at worst) GPL-violating, I also point out this simple fact to
those who have been heavily criticizing and admonishing RhodeCode GmbH: the
situation could be much worse! RhodeCode could have simply never
released
any of their code under the GPLv3 in the first place. After all,
there are many well-known code hosting sites that refuse to release any of
their code (or release only a pittance of small components). By contrast,
the GPLv3’d RhodeCode software was nearly a working system that helped
bootstrap the Kallithea community. I’m grateful for that, and I welcome
RhodeCode developers to contribute to Kallithea under GPLv3. I note,
of course, that RhodeCode developers sadly can’t incorporate any of our
improvements in their codebase, due to their problematic license. However,
I extend again my offer (also made privately last year) to work with
RhodeCode GmbH to correct its licensing problems.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/07/15/why-kallithea.html

[ This is a version of an essay
that I originally
published on Conservancy’s blog ].

Eleven days ago, Conservancy
announced
Kallithea. Kallithea is a GPLv3’d system for hosting and managing
Mercurial
and Git repositories on one’s own servers.
As Conservancy mentioned in its announcement, Kallithea is indeed based on
code released under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH. Below, I describe why I was
willing to participate in helping Conservancy become a non-profit home to
an obvious fork (as this is the first time Conservancy ever welcomed a fork
as a member project).

The primary impetus for Kallithea is that more recent versions of
RhodeCode GmbH’s codebase contain
a very
unorthodox and ambiguous license statement, which states:

(1) The Python code and integrated HTML are licensed under the GPLv3 license as
is RhodeCode itself.
(2) All other parts of the RhodeCode including, but not limited to the CSS code,
images, and design are licensed according to the license purchased.

Simply put, this licensing scheme is — either (a) a GPL violation, (b) an
unclear license permission statement under the GPL which leaves the
redistributor feeling unclear about their rights, or (c) both.

When members of the Mercurial community first brought this license to
my attention about ten months ago, my first focus was to form a
formal opinion regarding (a). Of course, I did form such an
opinion, and you can probably guess what that is. However, I realized a
few weeks later that this analysis really didn’t matter in this case; the
situation called for a more innovative solution.

Indeed, I recalled at that time
the disputes
between AT&T and University of California at Berkeley over BSD. In
that case, while nearly all of the BSD code was adjudicated as
freely licensed, the dispute itself was painful for the BSD
community. BSD’s development slowed nearly to a standstill for years while the
legal disagreement was resolved. Court action — even if
you’re in the right — isn’t always the fastest nor best way to push forward an
important Free Software project.

In the case of RhodeCode’s releases, there was an obvious and more
productive solution.
Namely, the
1.7.2 release of RhodeCode’s codebase, written primarily by Marcin
Kuzminski was fully released under GPLv3-only, and provided an
excellent starting point to begin a GPLv3’d fork. Furthermore, some of the
improved code in the 2.2.5 era of RhodeCode’s codebase were explicitly
licensed under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH itself. Finally, many volunteers
produced patches for all versions of RhodeCode’s codebase and released
those patches under GPLv3, too. Thus, there was already a burgeoning
GPLv3-friendly community yearning to begin.

My primary contribution, therefore, was to lead the process of vetting and
verifying a completely indisputable GPLv3’d version of the codebase. This
was extensive and time consuming work; I personally spent over 100 hours to
reach this point, and I suspect many Kallithea volunteers have already
spent that much and more. Ironically, the most complex part of the work so
far was verifying and organizing the licensing situation regarding
third-party Javascript (released under a myriad of various licenses). You
can see the details of that work by reading the revision history of
Kallithea (or, you can read an overview in
Kallithea’s
LICENSE file).

Like with any Free Software codebase fork, acrimony and disagreement led
to Kallithea’s creation. However, as the person who made most of the
early changesets for Kallithea, I want to thank RhodeCode GmbH
for explicitly releasing some of their work under GPLv3. Even as I hereby
reiterate publicly my previously private request that RhodeCode GmbH
correct the parts of their licensing scheme that are (at best) problematic,
and (at worst) GPL-violating, I also point out this simple fact to
those who have been heavily criticizing and admonishing RhodeCode GmbH: the
situation could be much worse! RhodeCode could have simply never
released
any of their code under the GPLv3 in the first place. After all,
there are many well-known code hosting sites that refuse to release any of
their code (or release only a pittance of small components). By contrast,
the GPLv3’d RhodeCode software was nearly a working system that helped
bootstrap the Kallithea community. I’m grateful for that, and I welcome
RhodeCode developers to contribute to Kallithea under GPLv3. I note,
of course, that RhodeCode developers sadly can’t incorporate any of our
improvements in their codebase, due to their problematic license. However,
I extend again my offer (also made privately last year) to work with
RhodeCode GmbH to correct its licensing problems.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/07/15/why-kallithea.html

[ This is a version of an essay
that I originally
published on Conservancy’s blog ].

Eleven days ago, Conservancy
announced
Kallithea. Kallithea is a GPLv3’d system for hosting and managing
Mercurial
and Git repositories on one’s own servers.
As Conservancy mentioned in its announcement, Kallithea is indeed based on
code released under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH. Below, I describe why I was
willing to participate in helping Conservancy become a non-profit home to
an obvious fork (as this is the first time Conservancy ever welcomed a fork
as a member project).

The primary impetus for Kallithea is that more recent versions of
RhodeCode GmbH’s codebase contain
a very
unorthodox and ambiguous license statement, which states:

(1) The Python code and integrated HTML are licensed under the GPLv3 license as
is RhodeCode itself.
(2) All other parts of the RhodeCode including, but not limited to the CSS code,
images, and design are licensed according to the license purchased.

Simply put, this licensing scheme is — either (a) a GPL violation, (b) an
unclear license permission statement under the GPL which leaves the
redistributor feeling unclear about their rights, or (c) both.

When members of the Mercurial community first brought this license to
my attention about ten months ago, my first focus was to form a
formal opinion regarding (a). Of course, I did form such an
opinion, and you can probably guess what that is. However, I realized a
few weeks later that this analysis really didn’t matter in this case; the
situation called for a more innovative solution.

Indeed, I recalled at that time
the disputes
between AT&T and University of California at Berkeley over BSD. In
that case, while nearly all of the BSD code was adjudicated as
freely licensed, the dispute itself was painful for the BSD
community. BSD’s development slowed nearly to a standstill for years while the
legal disagreement was resolved. Court action — even if
you’re in the right — isn’t always the fastest nor best way to push forward an
important Free Software project.

In the case of RhodeCode’s releases, there was an obvious and more
productive solution.
Namely, the
1.7.2 release of RhodeCode’s codebase, written primarily by Marcin
Kuzminski was fully released under GPLv3-only, and provided an
excellent starting point to begin a GPLv3’d fork. Furthermore, some of the
improved code in the 2.2.5 era of RhodeCode’s codebase were explicitly
licensed under GPLv3 by RhodeCode GmbH itself. Finally, many volunteers
produced patches for all versions of RhodeCode’s codebase and released
those patches under GPLv3, too. Thus, there was already a burgeoning
GPLv3-friendly community yearning to begin.

My primary contribution, therefore, was to lead the process of vetting and
verifying a completely indisputable GPLv3’d version of the codebase. This
was extensive and time consuming work; I personally spent over 100 hours to
reach this point, and I suspect many Kallithea volunteers have already
spent that much and more. Ironically, the most complex part of the work so
far was verifying and organizing the licensing situation regarding
third-party Javascript (released under a myriad of various licenses). You
can see the details of that work by reading the revision history of
Kallithea (or, you can read an overview in
Kallithea’s
LICENSE file).

Like with any Free Software codebase fork, acrimony and disagreement led
to Kallithea’s creation. However, as the person who made most of the
early changesets for Kallithea, I want to thank RhodeCode GmbH
for explicitly releasing some of their work under GPLv3. Even as I hereby
reiterate publicly my previously private request that RhodeCode GmbH
correct the parts of their licensing scheme that are (at best) problematic,
and (at worst) GPL-violating, I also point out this simple fact to
those who have been heavily criticizing and admonishing RhodeCode GmbH: the
situation could be much worse! RhodeCode could have simply never
released
any of their code under the GPLv3 in the first place. After all,
there are many well-known code hosting sites that refuse to release any of
their code (or release only a pittance of small components). By contrast,
the GPLv3’d RhodeCode software was nearly a working system that helped
bootstrap the Kallithea community. I’m grateful for that, and I welcome
RhodeCode developers to contribute to Kallithea under GPLv3. I note,
of course, that RhodeCode developers sadly can’t incorporate any of our
improvements in their codebase, due to their problematic license. However,
I extend again my offer (also made privately last year) to work with
RhodeCode GmbH to correct its licensing problems.