I'm as much an advocate of free software licenses as anyone, but what do you really hope to achieve with the polemical (and frankly uninformed) insults Aaron?

Dan, I appreciate your response.

I apologize for jumping to conclusions and being abrasive, but with the license you chose, and the difficulty I had in finding out what that license is, you should expect this to happen a lot once you get out of beta and the torrent of new users begins.

Perhaps you should make some source tarballs available easily from the main page?

You should be clear about the ECL and its compatibility with the GPLv2 (and the GPLv3 when it is finalized) from a link off the main page as well.

Personally, when and if I see zotero being released under a GPL-compatible license, I'll use it and also happily contribute. There is a big difference between gratis-free and libre-free, and I do not believe that the ECL in its current form achieves the latter.

Why are you NOT using the GPL, anyway? "Because Sakai does" isn't very convincing.

Also, regarding making "source tarballs available easily from the main page":

Zotero is a Firefox extension written entirely in JavaScript. The XPI file you download from the main page to install the extension is just a ZIP file with a different extension, and the zotero.jar file within it is just a ZIP file as well. The source code for the Word plugin, available separately, is also contained within the .dot file itself. Every single user of Zotero has the full source code and a copy of the ECL license.

And if you don't want to download the extension, there's SVN.

"It is quite permissive, and I fail to see how anyone could think it is a non-free license."

The problem with writing these new licenses that seem to be libre-free is that there exist a plethora of people out there who make business models based on infinitesimally small loopholes in these licenses that no reasonable person should have to plan for. Case in point is one of the motivating factors behind the GPLv3: tivoisation. I'm not saying this is a likely scenario for you, my point is that the GPL has already clearly dealt with these issues, and people who care about this know it. Another very important issue is how a license in one country works in another country. The GPL is also very concerned with this as well. Basically, IANAL, YANAL, WANL, but the GPLv3 is being edited by libre-minded lawyers in the field from all over the world who think (and litigate) about these issues all day long.

Stillman, thanks for the clarification. I've not contributed to a FF extension as of yet, so I did not know that the extension is composed of the same set of files every developer has.

"don't care," hah!

noksagt, you are clearly anti-GPL from an ideological standpoint. In the future, you should just come out and say that instead of trying to sell others on a different license that is somehow "just as good." I would have had my answer immediately.

Now that we have that established, I would like to know how I can initiate a debate about which license to use, and if possible bring the issue to a vote amongst you all.

It is entirely reasonable to request a discussion and vote about choosing a different license, if the project is actively attracting new developers and is still in the early stages. That's not bullying, it's asking for a reasonable democratic process.

In fact, for sponsored developers on any team who would choose the GPL given the choice, they have a much diminished voice because if they push for a different license, they can threaten their livelihood. That is one of the functions of outside developers, to bring up issues like this so that there is nobody to be "blamed" and given consequences for their speech. Think union organizing.

To "put up or shut up" as you say, is the same as "I'm taking my marbles and going home," which actually would be childish. The developers want to create a replacement for an entire class of academically useful proprietary software, and get a lot of people on board contributing, so those people's voices should be heard.

If you think lobbying for the GPL is just a "mis-informed personal preference," you are merely stating your own interpretations and prejudices as fact. You yourself are being insulting to even suggest my motivations come from some personal selfish preference as opposed to being a part of the ongoing debate about Free Software. It's not a green icon versus a yellow icon issue, and just because you can't imagine how I can draw a distinction between what you call "free" and what I call "free" doesn't make you better informed or correct. It's clear you and I will not agree, and we don't need to, that's why I'm asking for a wider discussion and a vote.

Now, I would like to again ask about a discussion and voting process to select the license. Unlike noksagt, I'm not asking to censor or bury anyone's voice.

A license discussion is a reasonable topic (although the final decision should rest with the developers and their sponsors).

What isn't reasonable are the (disinformational) insults that you lobbied first at Zotero and its developers because you thought that it was under a license which it wasn't & then which you spat at me for trying to explain to you the thought that had been put into the current license. It was somewhat amusing, but mostly frustrating, that a user of a proprietary reference manager which integrates only with proprietary office suites and runs only on proprietary operating systems would be so high-and-mighty about free/open source to me.

For my part, I'm sorry that I met your hostility in kind.

Sinking this thread would not "censor" it. It would not prevent more posts. It would only prevent it from being bumped to the top. I feel that there have been too many harsh words for this thread to be productive.

I agree with both Bruce and Aaron that a discussion on licensing would be interesting. But it should have both civility and accuracy, which this thread lacks (and which my last post didn't contribute to). Let's start fresh!

noksagt, yes, let's start fresh. I did everything you just said I did, and it's because this is such a charged issue for me. It's hard for me not to jump to conclusions about this issue and make it personal when it's not. Sorry.

Indeed I can see why you would be irritated by my saying I'm using EndNote and at the same time having a high-and-mighty opinion about the terms of the license. I assure you it's not hypocritical; it's that I feel the switch must be all-or-nothing, because anything less will probably be reverted to nothing as soon as someone looks the other way. This comes from my years inside scientific journals as a part-time programmer, and from my experiences every day in trying to get access to some paper I need to read when I know full well just how much of an academic publisher's website is dedicated to denying access instead of increasing it. It also comes from all the entrenched proprietary software I have to use in the biological sciences every day just to communicate with my colleagues and do my research. It's all about avoiding the "gotchas" that screw the whole effort, but get slipped in when nobody else is looking. I can expand upon this in the new thread.

Would someone else with more authority and knowledge of the project start the new thread?