Wedge

Public area => The Pub => Topic started by: Dragooon on December 22nd, 2010, 06:14 AM

Title: Legality
Post by: Dragooon on December 22nd, 2010, 06:14 AM
I was talking to Jordan and this struck to me, how legal is this project? I mean you are breaking the SMF's license(Not that everyone doesn't) but still..(I couldn't find an answer in the FAQ).
Title: Re: Legality
Post by: live627 on December 22nd, 2010, 06:46 AM
Not very legal right now, but the SMF project seems to be aiming for a BSD-like license. Therefore forks would be allowed.

I thought Nao's post at aeva's website covered this, assuming you've read it... :^^;:
Title: Re: Legality
Post by: JBlaze on December 22nd, 2010, 06:54 AM
It's perfectly legal since there has been no distribution as of yet.
Title: Re: Legality
Post by: Dragooon on December 22nd, 2010, 07:01 AM
Quote from JBlaze on December 22nd, 2010, 06:54 AM
It's perfectly legal since there has been no distribution as of yet.
No, but, at one point there will be(Since it would be kind of non-sensical to not distribute it).
Title: Re: Legality
Post by: Dragooon on December 22nd, 2010, 07:51 AM
Quote from live627 on December 22nd, 2010, 06:46 AM
Not very legal right now, but the SMF project seems to be aiming for a BSD-like license. Therefore forks would be allowed.

I thought Nao's post at aeva's website covered this, assuming you've read it... :^^;:
I got a bad reputation in reading.

According to Oldiesmann(Secretary of SMF BoD) SMF is indeed looking to adapt a BSD like license which will allow fork and the license should come with SMF 2.0 Final(So within next 3 years).
Title: Re: Legality
Post by: Nao on December 22nd, 2010, 08:01 AM
Quote from Dragooon on December 22nd, 2010, 07:51 AM
Quote from live627 on December 22nd, 2010, 06:46 AM
Not very legal right now, but the SMF project seems to be aiming for a BSD-like license. Therefore forks would be allowed.

I thought Nao's post at aeva's website covered this, assuming you've read it... :^^;:
I got a bad reputation in reading.
Go read it. Seriously. It covers the basics. Then go read the FAQ in the Public area here.
If you don't, then you're going to waste both your and our time and it won't be cool.
Quote
According to Oldiesmann(Secretary of SMF BoD) SMF is indeed looking to adapt a BSD like license
It's not according to him, it's according to the entire SMF team for the last year... As Pete repeatedly said, most of the ex-SMF devs agreed to sign their rights over to SMF only if it went OSI. That's why they have to go BSD: if they don't, the ex-devs will take back their code. (And that's also why we will need developers to sign a license agreement just to be on the safe side...)
Quote
which will allow fork and the license should come with SMF 2.0 Final(So within next 3 years).
Yes, and the FAQ's don't mention that because SMF2 Final was supposed to be out already when we'd release the website... Well it probably won't be :lol:
Title: Re: Legality
Post by: Dragooon on December 22nd, 2010, 08:02 AM
Yeah, sorry for not reading(I'll try to search more, honestly it didn't occur to me that you'd cover this topic on Noisen since I don't even visit that website).
Title: Re: Legality
Post by: Nao on December 22nd, 2010, 08:24 AM
Well you did visit it because you were aware of my feud with Akyhne... :P
And there's a topic in the list that says, "Fork you SMF".... :lol:

Anyway, you're simply too excited, just take some time to grasp it all and you should be fine!
Title: Re: Legality
Post by: Arantor on December 22nd, 2010, 10:39 AM
To confirm: this project is legal, as it stands right now, because all development is being done in a private repository and no distribution is taking place; we could distribute it even with all the changes as-is if we did so in a mod package.

It has been confirmed by Norv more than once, that SMF 2.0 final will adopt New BSD as its licence. Right now, aside from any bugs (of which there are an alarming number classed as 'pushed back to 2.1'), the main stumbling block is that they feel they have to finish transferring all legal rights and assets to the NPO prior to final.
Title: Re: Legality
Post by: Nao on December 22nd, 2010, 10:50 AM
I thought that was ready?
Title: Re: Legality
Post by: Arantor on December 22nd, 2010, 10:52 AM
Nope, it's still in the process of happening apparently.