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Contributing Source Code
In order to practice the dual licensing business model, Quantum Leaps must own all copyrights to the licensed software. Therefore all source code contributions will require that the software is automatically available under both the GNU General Public License (GPL) and our proprietary licenses. However, according to the GPL section 2[b] (copyleft), all contributions made to the GPL version of the Quantum Leaps products must themselves be licensed under the GPL. The owners of the copyrights in the improvements may additionally authorize dual licensing of their contributions under Quantum Leaps' commercial licenses, but nothing in the GPL requires them to do so [Rosen 04].
Therefore, Quantum Leaps asks that developers who wish to contribute such code fill out the Joint Copyright Assignment (JCA) form so that the copyright is unified. The JCA ensures that Quantum Leaps can dual-license the contributions and defend license violations, if necessary.
Our JCA is similar to other JCAs used in the open source community, such as the Sun Microsystem's JCA form, or RealNetworks' Helix Project JCA. Under our JCA, both Quantum Leaps and the contributor retain full rights to use and modify the contributed work.
Our experience with the Quantum Framework (QF) suggests, however, that most valuable are not so much the source code contributions, as the massively parallel testing that takes place in the user community. For example, since the publication of Practical Statecharts in C/C++ in July 2002 no core-product code has been taken directly from user contributions. Rather, all improvement suggestions have been re-implemented in-house typically very differently than originally proposed by the contributors.
Nonetheless, Quantum Leaps encourages and welcomes contributions of all kind, including the source code contributions. Perhaps the most valuable to the user community are the various ports of the QF to different processors, operating systems, and compilers. We will review all contributions on the case-by-case basis and reserve the right to accept, reject, or modify the contributions at our discretion. For particularly valuable contributions, we might even negotiate a reward program with the contributor, according to the quid pro quo principle.
If you wish to make a contribution to Quantum Leaps, please send us e-mail to dev@quantum-leaps.com.
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Version: July 31, 2008