[Qgis-psc] QGIS licence (was: QGIS on iOS was QGIS for Mobile (Android))

[Tim Sutton]

Hi

On Thu, 17 Oct 2019, 16:53 Paolo Cavallini, <cavallini at faunalia.it> wrote:

> Hi Tim
>
> On 17/10/19 17:49, Tim Sutton wrote:
>
> > I don’t think so - we can put in place the safeguards in our statutes to
> > prevent this if needed. Simple wording like ‘If we ever want to sell to
> > ESRI, all voting members must agree’.
>
> sorry, this seems very weak to me. What would be the advantage of it?
> AFAICT, only the greater freedom to change the licence at will.
>

Yes that is exactly my point. The point of it would be that we have the
mechanism to change our license e.g. to add an exception for distribution
on the apple store if we want to. We have the flexibilility to change any
part of our code base but somehow we don't have the same freedom over our
license.

Who knows in the future what technology will bring and what delivery
mechanisms will exist that our users gravitate towards? We need to be able
to meet there where they use their devices and being able to make (with
consensus) tweaks to our license is vital to support that.

I think discussions of selling QGIS to the highest bidder are just adding
fearmongering into the discussion : I cant see any way that someone could
achieve that within our current governance structures, nor can I think of
anyone in our developer community who might actually be entertaining such
an idea.

Regards

Tim

Cheers.
>
> --
> Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu
> QGIS.ORG Chair:
> http://planet.qgis.org/planet/user/28/tag/qgis%20board/
>
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