[TYPO3-50-general] Contributing to TYPO3 v5 / FLOW3: License Agreement

[Robert Lemke]

Hi Steffen,

Am 29.04.2008 um 16:12 schrieb Steffen Müller:

> I can't find a passage in the agreement about GPL 2.
> Does that mean that we shall grant a copyright licence, but not in
> conjunction with GPL?
>
> Confused about the legal mumbo-jumbo.

I admit that this legal stuff is not really fun to deal with. We  
discussed among the
active members if the text could be simplified or use better wording  
but then decided
in favour of using the original text from the Apache Foundation to  
keep ourselves from
legal trouble.

The reason why GPL is not mentioned in the CLA is that it has nothing  
to do with it.
The agreement is a contract between you and the Association in which  
you allow the
Association to use your contribution in any way which is conform to  
the Association's
goal as a non-profit organisation and Open Source project.

This implies that the Association could at a later point decide to  
license TYPO3 under
GPL v3 or FreeBSD license or whatever makes most sense. Without having  
a CLA with all
contributors, the license practically can never be changed again. Even  
dual licensing
would be possible.

All this is quite important because we hope that parts of TYPO3 (such  
as FLOW3) will
be used by many people and some of them might not be able to use for  
example GPL v3
licensed code (because they are using a more liberate license which is  
not compatible).

Does that shed some light on the mumbo-jumbo?

Cheers,
robert