Changing to OpenSource licence?

Posted by on November 16, 2011 Leave a comment (18) Go to comments

Several times, many of you have asked me why the licence was not OpenSource.
Until now, I was not focusing on such aspects and I must say that I’ve opened my mind on this subject.

I have in mind to first finish TeamPass in version 2.0 and to deliver it very quicky (next Friday afternoon 18-NOV-2011) . The 2d step is to change the actual licence to BSD 3.3 for TeamPass 2.1.
In that context, if you have any knowledge of OpenSource licences, please contact me in order to give me some advises for the best licence choose.

With this change, I’d like to open the development of TeamPass to Contributors which should permit to propose interesting evolution much often and also to improve the core of the tool.
I’d like to know if some of you could be interested to become a Contributor? Please don’t be shy, it’s just for me to organize myself. Perhaps can you detail on what you’re specialized (example: jquery, database, php, security, etc…).
This change will certainly made me move the source code to Github instead of GoogleCode.

For the others, how such a change can impact your actual use of TeamPass?

As you can see, I’ve started to have a reflection on this tool and how to give it more maturity and make it more interesting for companies, schools, administrations, etc.

Please don’t hesitate to give me your point of view.

Greetings

TeamPass's Life,
Leave a comment ?

18 Comments.

  1. Mathieu Lequin November 19, 2011 at 9:18 am

    I think this is a good thing. I discovered TeamPass while reading this article : http://www.toolinux.com/Gestionnaires-de-mots-de-passe

    TeamPass had a bad review because :” Il est distribué sous une licence Creative Common By-Nc-Nd. Autrement dit, vous êtes libre d’utiliser ce logiciel à condition de ne pas le revendre et de ne pas le modifier, ce qui revient à en faire un logiciel non-libre.”

    I don’t know if you read french, but it says that it’s not an open source software. Later in the text he just tells us to not install the soft because it’s not opensource !!!

    If you made it opensource, and you document the way you encrypt password in the db, you’ll have much more users ;-)

    Thanks for everything !

    Reply
  2. raiph mellor November 21, 2011 at 9:01 am

    Just wanted to say that any OSI license would be great news. I’ll mention this change to our sysadmin. If we figure out that one or other OSI license would be best, I’ll post another message.

    Also commend move to github.

    Reply
    • Nils November 21, 2011 at 5:49 pm

      Yes I’ve found this OSI site.
      I think I’ll move the licence to BSD-3 which seems to be more suitable to this tool.

      I’ve prepared my github repository and will soon move the sources. I’ll communicate when it will be done.

      Thank you

      Reply
  3. Fotis Paraskevopoulos November 28, 2011 at 10:10 pm

    Just be aware, that there is no alternative that I know of at the moment, except for commercial ones.

    Opening your code will IMHO not get you the contributions you might expect, but you will get a patch here and there. You will still maintain your software, and in 99% of the cases you will be the only one that knows how it really works.

    In saying that just make sure that the license you pick, doesn’t allow other companies from forking and providing the same software as closed source and for a price. Having that protection will allow you to provide “professional” support for self-hosted installations in the future, if you so wish.

    You could also provide your services in the “cloud” and charge a small fee, but you will have to deal with all the customer-service overhead.

    Given that the users of your software store some pretty sensible information, opening your code might attract some security experts that will give you insight on how to protect the information better.

    My 2 cents, hope this helps

    Reply
    • Nils December 2, 2011 at 5:20 pm

      Hi Fotis,
      Thank you for your point of view … very interesting.
      I’m quite in the same position concerning the fact that companies can sold it, and I’ll be very frustrated if the code is quite the same.
      Do you have any idea of what could be the most interesting licence for me?

      The “in the cloud service” is something I’ve thought about and could put in place quite quickly.

      Many thanks

      Reply
      • Kathrin December 8, 2011 at 4:59 pm

        The BSD license would allow a company to fork it, close-source it, and keep the changes to themselves.

        The GPL, on the other hand, would require companies to open-source modified versions they made. The GPL covers distribution (not use), so individual users would not be compelled to publish their changes unless they distributed the software itself.

        Depending on your aims, the GPL may be a more appropriate license than BSD.

      • Nils December 8, 2011 at 8:00 pm

        Yes I’ve read a lot since a few days on OpenSource licence and I must say that GPL licence is more what I require for this tool.

        Thank you Kathrin for comforting me in that way.

      • Raboo December 16, 2011 at 9:12 pm

        Hi,
        Fotis have a strong point. Aswell does Kathrin.
        But you don’t know if you will get a lot of contributors or forks.. However using GitHub, the whole idéa is that you are able to easily fork other stuff. Perhaps you should look at some other places to put your code?

        Also you could write your own short licence?
        For instance:

        This code is allowed/not allowed for commercial use.
        Any changes to the source code will have to be publicly available on the Internet. The author must be notified of any changes to the source code. etc etc…

  4. Cesar December 1, 2011 at 6:21 pm

    is the code in github yet?

    Reply
    • Nils December 2, 2011 at 5:14 pm

      No not yet … still have not chosen the licence I want to apply.
      For my information, have you an idea of what you could do with the code and how you could support it?
      Thank you

      Reply
  6. Marcelo Mendes December 15, 2011 at 4:02 am

    I think the GPLv3 is the most suitable and secure license in terms of “what people will do with your released code”, you will may have to deal with some “” of your code, but, you will be able to track every change and new features implemented there, even if the contribute doesn’t goes directly to you, thanks to GPL! Anyway, as an free software advocate I wish you open the code and let the people come to look at it, I’m sure that a few heavy coders will love to take a look at it, and the feedback may help you improve it and make it more and more reliable. Even with possible forks chances are that people give attention to your project as the upstream, and pay for some professional support will be attractive to companies :)

    Reply
    • Nils December 15, 2011 at 9:41 pm

      Thank you Marcelo for your long and precise explanations. I really appreciate.
      So yes my choice is made for GPLv3 licence. It will be changed for TeamPass v2.1 that I’ll release during the Christmass holidays.
      From there, I’ll put the source code on Github.

      Thank you

      Reply
  7. Raphaël Doursenaud December 21, 2011 at 7:41 pm

    Hi,

    I’ve been one of the people asking you to Open Source it.
    I’d be very happy to contribute.
    Looking at the comments, you seem to be going for the GPL, I’d like to suggest you take look at the Affero GPL. It includes a special clause to protect users of hosted code wich is the case with TeamPass.
    I think it would be the perfect licence to protect both your rights and those of the users of your software.
    Make sure to review the available GNU licences at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.fr.html and understand what they will and won’t do for you.

    Reply