[appstream] RFC: Software Center & Copyright Assigment

[Matthias Klumpp]

Hi!

> I've been involved in several discussions with Canonical about this, and
> the result appears to be that this won't change in the near future. What
> might happen, but keep in mind that it's just my understanding, is a
> transition to Harmony once it's ready:
>   http://www.harmonyagreements.org/
Isn't Harmony just another copyright assignment?
I'm very disappointed by Canonical - I'm following Ubuntu since they
started and I still don't think I understand Canonical or Mark. In the past
months they lost nearly all my credit towards them. (The most insane is
insisting on the "Ubuntu Philosophy")
I know this is OT, but has Canonical named a reason for keeping their CA?
I'm very interested in this, because I can't think of one...

So, on topic:
>  a) Live with it.
As the original SC has the same goals as a fork would have, in theory this
would be a possible option. But personally I'm against
copyright-assignments and I don't think there are many people here who want
their rights on the code they wrote to be transfered to Canonical with an
option for proprietary relicensing. (I don't think they will ever do it,
but this is a matter of philosophy)
Live with it would also make some devs unhappy and we will have some
problems to attract new developers to work on it. So, no, live with it is
no good option for the future.

>  b) Maintain a "light" fork.
Not cool - there will be so much changes necessary AND the USC will need
to do duplicate work, as they want to switch to PackageKit and the
AppStream specs to. So in the end this could become option a) or c)
automatically. (Also, maintaining a bunch of patches it no elegant
solution)

>  c) Completely fork.
It is difficult to tell what happens if a complete fork is initiated. For
example, we might end up with one project based on AppStream & PackageKit,
and another one based on Aptdaemon etc. cause it makes not much sense for
the original USC to switch to PK - but I want to have everything using
PackageKit ;-)
Also, having two software-centers in Ubuntu/Debian could be confusing.
BUT doing a complete for would really make the conditions clear, new
developers would know a place to start and the whole process seems much
more clear to me.
Also, a competition between two SC could be nice. (And I would like to
ship the for in Debian too, if this is possible) It would also be a really
strong signal against Canonical's CA.
So, I would vote for option c) or the "start with a light fork and then
move to c)" one.

Richard Hughes wrote:
> I'd bet a small wager that if we forked the project, Michael would
> pick up the fork as the main project, kinda like happened with GCC.
I'm sure he would, but I don't think he's allowed to do this...

Regards,
  Matthias