kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 02/18/2012 01:47 PM, Fabio Varesano wrote:
>> I see no scenario under which KiCad will "loose its open source status".
> Also, there are legal ways in getting money from the community without 
> risking to forget the focus of freedoms and openness.
>
> For example there could be a legally registered, democratically 
> driven, non-profit association having clearly detailed in its Statuses 
> its role in fostering the growth of KiCad and its focus on keeping the 
> freedom aspects of the project alive.
>
> Again the Drupal project is a very good example of all of this: 
> https://association.drupal.org/about
> Also interesting their Statuses 
> https://association.drupal.org/about/history/drupal-vzw-statutes


Fabio,

I think something like this is eventually a good idea.

(Although in English I have never seen the term "Statuses" to reflect what is more
typically named a "Charter" or "By Laws".
Something lost in translation to English?)

For such an organization to gain any authority over the code, this entity would still need
the agreement of the current copyright holders.  Such an agreement would not necessarily
entail transfer of ownership, but would entail some kind of grant of authority via a
special license.  I do think this would be very possible, especially if it did not entail
any transfer of ownership.

On a separate topic, such a foundation would not preclude one or more private companies or
persons from offering to do KiCad work for a fee.  (These are two separate topics.)

I'm sure Wayne would go to work right away on such a basis.  He needs work.

Dick