So, you might be avoiding this thread at this point, and that's fine. I just stumbled onto the site/project after searching around for an alternative to Calibre.
In a way, (and this is just pedantry and not really directed to you) Ubooquity is already "open-source" in that all of the code is viewable with a simple `jar xf Ubooquity.jar` Not that I dug deeper beyond that to see if there was any sort of obfuscation further down the line. And I don't think that is really what folks are looking for or, after reading your comments above, what I believe you disagree with. Where I think the friction is, is in the licensing.
The first part, which I personally don't agree with, but completely respect your right to include in something that you crafted, is where it states:
Modification ------------ Modification of the Ubooquity software is not allowed.
I don't think you would ever chase someone down if they decided to edit the code on their installation of Ubooquity, but technically it doesn't allow for them to do so legally. Again, pedantry/nit-picky, but it plays into the second part.
Which is, the part of the license that also says:
Redistribution -------------- Redistribution of the Ubooquity software is not allowed without explicit authorization from its author (users must download it from the Ubooquity website: http://vaemendis.net/ubooquity).
What we have with these two sections in the license is the inability for someone else to take this code (again, legally and being nitpicky) and host it on someplace like Github to work collaboratively with others on it.
Now, I wholeheartedly agree with your reluctance to manage all that mess yourself. In my own personal projects, which admittedly have never gotten even a fraction, of a fraction of the interest that yours has, I explicitly state that if someone wants to fork it and work on it, they can, but I won't be monitoring PRs etc. Again, like you, I have enough of that in my own life.
However, what we have here are a (small) number of interested folks in helping contribute to the growth of this project even as your own ability to contribute slows as other, more important, parts of your life take away the time that might have been spent working on it.
Where I'm going with this is to offer up that maybe there's a solution here to amend the license to remove those two sections. The number of people asking for access to contribute is very, very, small. But with that change, they could be directed to creating their own fork to work on it on their own with others. There are other projects that do that and then sometimes cherry-pick commits from those other forked projects to pull back into their own.
You seem better versed in licensing based off of how well you cite the third-party libraries included in Ubooquity. So this isn't meant to be a push or a shove, just putting it out there in the slim chance that you haven't already considered it or are planning on it for some future date already.
I hope you're doing well in these crazy times, thank you for this useful piece of software you've put out into the world, and if you've made it this far, for taking the time to read my thoughts.
Hi Tom,
So, you might be avoiding this thread at this point, and that's fine. I just stumbled onto the site/project after searching around for an alternative to Calibre.
In a way, (and this is just pedantry and not really directed to you) Ubooquity is already "open-source" in that all of the code is viewable with a simple `jar xf Ubooquity.jar` Not that I dug deeper beyond that to see if there was any sort of obfuscation further down the line. And I don't think that is really what folks are looking for or, after reading your comments above, what I believe you disagree with. Where I think the friction is, is in the licensing.
The first part, which I personally don't agree with, but completely respect your right to include in something that you crafted, is where it states:
Modification
------------
Modification of the Ubooquity software is not allowed.
I don't think you would ever chase someone down if they decided to edit the code on their installation of Ubooquity, but technically it doesn't allow for them to do so legally. Again, pedantry/nit-picky, but it plays into the second part.
Which is, the part of the license that also says:
Redistribution
--------------
Redistribution of the Ubooquity software is not allowed without explicit authorization from its author (users must download it from the Ubooquity website: http://vaemendis.net/ubooquity).
What we have with these two sections in the license is the inability for someone else to take this code (again, legally and being nitpicky) and host it on someplace like Github to work collaboratively with others on it.
Now, I wholeheartedly agree with your reluctance to manage all that mess yourself. In my own personal projects, which admittedly have never gotten even a fraction, of a fraction of the interest that yours has, I explicitly state that if someone wants to fork it and work on it, they can, but I won't be monitoring PRs etc. Again, like you, I have enough of that in my own life.
However, what we have here are a (small) number of interested folks in helping contribute to the growth of this project even as your own ability to contribute slows as other, more important, parts of your life take away the time that might have been spent working on it.
Where I'm going with this is to offer up that maybe there's a solution here to amend the license to remove those two sections. The number of people asking for access to contribute is very, very, small. But with that change, they could be directed to creating their own fork to work on it on their own with others. There are other projects that do that and then sometimes cherry-pick commits from those other forked projects to pull back into their own.
You seem better versed in licensing based off of how well you cite the third-party libraries included in Ubooquity. So this isn't meant to be a push or a shove, just putting it out there in the slim chance that you haven't already considered it or are planning on it for some future date already.
I hope you're doing well in these crazy times, thank you for this useful piece of software you've put out into the world, and if you've made it this far, for taking the time to read my thoughts.