[Xapian-devel] Xapian license change

Dan Colish dcolish at gmail.com
Thu May 17 17:14:18 BST 2012


On Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 8:23 AM, Charlie Hull wrote:
> On 17/05/2012 16:16, Dan Colish wrote:
> > The more I read on this thread the more I am confused. I'm starting
> > to wonder who's asking for relicensing here because its starting to
> > read like we, the Xapian developers, are asking how to relicense and
> > what work we'd need to do. That is not the case. A request like this
> > comes up once or twice a year and the requestor usually disappears a
> > week later.
> > 
> > You need to be a part of the community to have this discussion. I'm
> > sure anyone can appreciate what it is like for an outsider to tell
> > you how to do things. So please, join the community, get to know its
> > members, and write patches or create documentation. Help us improve
> > Xapian for a bit, then we can talk about why the licensing needs to
> > change and how to go about it. Remember, our time is an extremely
> > precious resource and I would like to use that time to make Xapian
> > better rather than rewriting code so it can be relicensed.
> 
> 
> 
> To rewind a little, at least one of the people asking about this is from 
> a company interested in using Xapian in their products but unable to 
> because of the GPL. They have indicated they may be able to fund some 
> development towards this end. Surely sponsored development of Xapian is 
> a good thing?
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Charlie
> 

True, I think sponsored development is a good thing in most cases, but its a bit hard to do without a clear proposal. PyPy has done most of their work through academic grants and the money is always attached to very clears goals and steps. I would be hesitant to accept money without going through that same process.






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