2009.10.06 22:07 "[Tiff] SourceForge terms changes, heads up", by Bob Friesenhahn

2009.10.07 02:00 "Re: [Tiff] SourceForge terms changes, heads up", by Bob Friesenhahn

Luckily, libtiff itself does not rely on SourceForge but it seems that the SourceForge change in terms may impact users of libtiff and other historical libraries which lack an OSI-Approved License.

I guess then, that SourceForge will loose a lot of projects.

In the past year SourceForge has been making a lot of changes which are claimed to be on the open source developer's behalf, but are clearly for some other purpose. Suddenly certain types of commercially-oriented software projects (e.g. "Enterprise Resource Planning") became most of the "top" projects without any data to support it.

The "OSI-Approved License" issue is now seeming quite minor to compared to issues with other agreement text (which is maintained in a live wiki). The normal protection clauses of the package's license need to be waived (as pertains to SourceForge and its many business partners) in order to upload the software and you idemnify SourceForce against any related loss such as a lawsuit. Idemnify means you pay all legal fees, costs, and awards due to a lawsuit.

Bob
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Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/