License vs CLA

[mb21]

Eventually, I would like to distribute PanWriter in one of the app stores as well, or at least keep the door open to do so. Since the GPL and for example the Apple App Store are incompatible, there seem to be these options.

• keep the code GPLv3 but also get a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) from each contributor, using e.g. https://cla-assistant.io. Not sure what exactly the agreement would have to say... the FSF e.g. requires copyright transfer for their project. (CLAs is also what e.g. Signal-iOS and many larger organizations do.)

• switch to the Mozilla Public License (that's apparently what VLC does)

  The MPL is a simple copyleft license. The MPL's "file-level" copyleft is designed to encourage contributors to share modifications they make to your code, while still allowing them to combine your code with code under other licenses (open or proprietary) with minimal restrictions.

• switch to a BSD-style copyleft-free license, like the MIT license. This makes it even easier for someone to distribute a clone of the app in an app store, which may or may not have been altered, charge for it, etc. – all without contributing back to the community.

Interesting blog post discussing some trade-offs.

Feedback welcome!

[ickc]

Migrate from discussion in https://groups.google.com/d/msg/pandoc-discuss/_K1ps8SuEKM/I-1gFPs3AgAJ

Any plan on making it available to iOS? This is the toughest platform and personally one thing I miss in iOS a way to work with pandoc document. If you want to deploy on iOS, then GPL help you to avoid others making a clone there. But if you don’t, then GPL will prevents others to make it available to iOS.

[martyheyman]

At https://symas.com we use BSD 3-clause (MIT-like) derivative. The OpenLDAP project that we support does. There was an OpenLDAP fork but it did not gain traction. Forks succeed when fame and glory is available ($£€). Our motto is "It's hard to compete with free!"). The people who really know the product attract the people you want using your stuff. Just one opinion.