But you do get all code under GPL, which you seem to agree is a freedom preserving choice. That does make Slint free software and as save to use as any other free software project out there.
The story is a bit different when you want to contribute to slint. Slint is not a even playing field for contributions. The company has an advantage in that if can use all contributions as MIT and you can only use the companies changes under GPL, commercial, or royalty free terms.
As a contributor you need to decide whether you contribute to the slint repository, or maybe write an add-on library which you are free to license as you see fit.
I’m saying that GPL-licensed *projects* protect themselves well. If you lean on a GPL project, it’s likely going to hold. Not disappear because of a commercial incentive. Non-copyleft projects tend to disappear if they become valuable to companies, such as IntelliJ’s Rust plugin, or BSD => MacOS.
Again if you’re developing a non-open-source project, Slint is fine. You’ll be bound to each other with mutual commercial interests.
You are fine with a free software project using Slint as well: Slint is a GPL project, with everything that implies. The releases are out there and the slint project is bound to the terms it released them under. In theory we could release new versions without the GPL option, but we can not take the sources of the released versions away. Neither the other licensing options nor the contribution rules change that. If youbare happy with GPL dependencies, you can use Slint just as any other GPL dependency, with the same risks and benefits.
The copyright holders of any GPL project can decide to relicense their (future) releases. I admit that it is a bit simpler in Slints case due to the contribution rules, but other projects have similar rules in place. Copyright assignments, CLAs, …, they all exist to simplify a possible future relicensing effort. And even GPL projects without such provisions in place have manged to relicense before.
As a user of Slint you typically never get into contact with our contribution setup at all. Only a contributor might pause and decide not to spend time on Slint due to that. IMHO that is entirely normal: I use tons of free and open source projects that I would never contribute to – for various reasons ranging from contribution terms, to programming language being used or the projects community.
In many cases you can also publish slint related code in your own repository under whatever license you like. While this obviously does not work for core functionality that has to live in Slint itself, it does work for a wide range of things you might want to make available (like new widgets, …).
I think we can’t find an agreement on our angles on the topic so much that it’s simply not constructive to push the conversation further. I’m afraid that if I’ll try to say anything now, it’ll be a repetition of what was already written earlier.
In short, I see Slint as a not GPL project (but rather as a commercial project that happens for now to release the source code as GPL). I see GPL projects as fundamentally different to Slint, in a sense that, once you have enough external contributors, you simply cannot revert back and stop being a GPL project, whereas in Slint I see it as possible. I trust GPL projects and I know I can “lean” on them, whereas I’d advise to rely on Slint only if you have commercial entanglement that you want to keep.
But you do get all code under GPL, which you seem to agree is a freedom preserving choice. That does make Slint free software and as save to use as any other free software project out there.
The story is a bit different when you want to contribute to slint. Slint is not a even playing field for contributions. The company has an advantage in that if can use all contributions as MIT and you can only use the companies changes under GPL, commercial, or royalty free terms.
As a contributor you need to decide whether you contribute to the slint repository, or maybe write an add-on library which you are free to license as you see fit.
I’m not sure if you’re reading my message well?
I’m saying that GPL-licensed *projects* protect themselves well. If you lean on a GPL project, it’s likely going to hold. Not disappear because of a commercial incentive. Non-copyleft projects tend to disappear if they become valuable to companies, such as IntelliJ’s Rust plugin, or BSD => MacOS.
Again if you’re developing a non-open-source project, Slint is fine. You’ll be bound to each other with mutual commercial interests.
You are fine with a free software project using Slint as well: Slint is a GPL project, with everything that implies. The releases are out there and the slint project is bound to the terms it released them under. In theory we could release new versions without the GPL option, but we can not take the sources of the released versions away. Neither the other licensing options nor the contribution rules change that. If youbare happy with GPL dependencies, you can use Slint just as any other GPL dependency, with the same risks and benefits.
The copyright holders of any GPL project can decide to relicense their (future) releases. I admit that it is a bit simpler in Slints case due to the contribution rules, but other projects have similar rules in place. Copyright assignments, CLAs, …, they all exist to simplify a possible future relicensing effort. And even GPL projects without such provisions in place have manged to relicense before.
As a user of Slint you typically never get into contact with our contribution setup at all. Only a contributor might pause and decide not to spend time on Slint due to that. IMHO that is entirely normal: I use tons of free and open source projects that I would never contribute to – for various reasons ranging from contribution terms, to programming language being used or the projects community.
In many cases you can also publish slint related code in your own repository under whatever license you like. While this obviously does not work for core functionality that has to live in Slint itself, it does work for a wide range of things you might want to make available (like new widgets, …).
I think we can’t find an agreement on our angles on the topic so much that it’s simply not constructive to push the conversation further. I’m afraid that if I’ll try to say anything now, it’ll be a repetition of what was already written earlier.
In short, I see Slint as a not GPL project (but rather as a commercial project that happens for now to release the source code as GPL). I see GPL projects as fundamentally different to Slint, in a sense that, once you have enough external contributors, you simply cannot revert back and stop being a GPL project, whereas in Slint I see it as possible. I trust GPL projects and I know I can “lean” on them, whereas I’d advise to rely on Slint only if you have commercial entanglement that you want to keep.
I’d propose to agree to disagree.