Change license to GPLv3

[d4rken]

I think it would be in the interest of this project to change the license from MIT to GPLv3.
Any fork of this app even if someone wants to make it commercial, should at the least be open source too and share their improvements with the community.

• Little tricks, hacks and improvements are what spawned everything (someone sharing the magic packet). We can only advance this if we all share our knowledge.
• Of course someone can just ignore any type of license, but setting one to e.g. GPLv3 which requires sharing sets the right "tone"/"spirit" for this project.
• Your sister app FPV-DVCA is GPL licensed too and we might share core logic in the future ❤️
• The only downside I see, is for anyone who wants to fork DigiView into a closed source app to commercialize it without contributing anything in return, which doesn't seem to be in the FPV communities best interest.
• The GPLv3 license has worked very well for other successful FPV community projects: Cleanflight/Betaflight/INAV/Ardupilot

[fichek]

As you said yourself, GPL isn't gonna stop anyone from using your code and ignoring the license. You don't have to look further than DJI itself to see this. Unless you lawyer up, you're just complicating things for everyone including yourself. I vote stay with MIT.

No one is gonna earn money just releasing this as a paid app with a new name and icon, unless they provide a lot of additional value.

[jlucidar]

added this to the Beta milestone as we should act on this before going live.

My input on this :

• I always used MIT for my project as it's the most open of a License and I don't want to "constrain" people that want to beneficiate from my work into open sourcing or contributing back.
• @d4rken have some pretty solids arguments and a valuable experience. I don't see any other issue than the one I just mentionned.
• maybe having the main app as GPL and the core as MIT would be a nice compromise (though we haven't separate the core logic yet)

[squshy7]

Here are my thoughts:
Picking a license can be tricky since it is a short decision meant to inform a long vision. It's not untrue to say that we have no real idea what the long term consequences of this project are; it could end up being a major part of the community or something very niche. It's also not untrue to say that at this early stage we all have different visions for DigiView. And that's ok! That's what makes community projects great! It can also be a pain point if we don't discuss those visions out in the open.

If we're talking about works derived from DigiView (which is why we're even discussing licensing), I like the idea of other projects being "powered by DigiView". I also like the idea of having the core tech that drives each platform's app organized into a consolidated "DigiView Engine" repo, where other developers can pick the parts relevant to their platform and implement in their own works. There certainly many possibilities outside the scope of the apps we are building; maybe a dev directs races and wants some very specific functionality built in. Maybe a dev does film work and wants some director specific features.

What informs this idea is the basic premise that, yes, we should do what gives us the best chance of having attribution. That's my opinion. Is GPL the solution to that? Let's take a scenario that is not unlikely:

TBS is a company that is open when they want and where they have to be, but will also be closed where they can. They generally follow license rules. TBS could conceivably want to implement DigiView in their Agent M software to add functionality to the app and further adoption.

In this scenario:
Under MIT, I find it very plausible they would follow the bare minimum. I find it less likely they would let the source be available, and somewhere in the middle that we would get proper attribution.

Under GPL, their hand would be forced, of course. But perhaps what is even more likely is that GPL would prevent TBS from implementing DigiView in the first place, due to the infectious-nature of GPL.

A second scenario that provides a different context: a developer wants to make a dedicated Livestreaming app that doesn't require having to screen record. In the course of development improvements are found and made to the DigiView Engine, which there is an incentive to do by this developer due to the nature of their project. Well, we absolutely want to be able to incorporate these improvements back in to DigiView, and GPL gives us the best probability of this happening.

To summarize my desires out of these scenarios, I want to see DigiView be attractive for others to use, especially those who have the talent or incentive to make really cool things with it, because that grows the "brand", while not discouraging some parties (like companies) from even starting a project to begin with, ALL WHILE ensuring proper attribution and upstream development. So it seems to me that, in my opinion, what I want is the copyleft traits that GPL provides, but without the inherent nature of forcing all ancillary works built AROUND DigiView to be GPL. This butts up against the extent of my knowledge of these things. Are there any other licenses that combine these qualities?

Lastly, to the point that a license can always be broken: well, yes, of course. There will always be cases of non-compliance in all human set rules. But, in my opinion, that should not inform the decision. We certainly don't abolish laws simply because people can break them. In my opinion, is always about what gives us the best chance of having the outcome we want.

[Consti10]

Interesting discussion here.
@jlucidar
tell me though:
How would you feel if I merged your code and work into my FPV_VR app ?
For reference:
It is open source on the one hand.
On the other hand,I sell it for ~1€ on play store, and do not offer .apk-s for download.
I personally went for this model because my take has always been:
If you are a developer and contribute, you are able to build the app yourself.
If you are not a developer and do not contribute, you can buy the app and contribute this way.

[DusKing1]

I would recommend the AGPL since it can be transited to a webapp.