We're the creators of Lemmy, Ask Us Anything. *Starts Monday, 7 Aug, 1500 CEST*

Dessalines@lemmy.mlmod to Announcements@lemmy.ml – 1372 points –

This is an opportunity for any users, server admins, or interested third parties to ask anything they'd like to @nutomic@lemmy.ml and I about Lemmy. This includes its development and future, as well as wider issues relevant to the social media landscape today.

Note: This will be the thread tmrw, so you can use this thread to ask and vote on questions beforehand.

Original Announcement thread

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Thoughts on a GPL4?

Many examples indicate an even stronger license is needed, I will list a few

  1. The current RedHat debacle

  2. MuseScore's closed source Musehub (after being acquired by Ultimatw Guitar)

  3. Google commiting copyright infringement by combining free (as in freedom) software with code under Apache license for Android

We clearly need a stronger, more all encompassing license.

I'm not too familiar with it, but I'm always open to moving to stronger copyleft-licenses, if the AGPLv3 is proving inadequate.

does lemmy have a CLA to make changing licenses less of a headache? or did is project AGPLv3-or-later?

I'm no legal expert, so I don't know what updating the license entails, and why you wouldn't as the creator be able to change the license freely as you see fit.

every contributor has independently licensed the portion of the code they contributed under the current license. so most larger FOSS projects require a Contributor License Assignment to the org managing that project such that changes like these are legally feasible. otherwise you have to track down every person who made a one line change or risk getting sued for copyright infringement.

when you work for a corporation this license assignment is a standard part of the employment contract for this exact reason. our copyright system is deeply broken.

theres no gpl4 yet the idea has been floated around