IMHO:

1) If you create something, and you are not under contract to another entity, you own it as intellectual property, and you can do whatever you want with it.

2) Open source and even free and open source does not imply any contribution model or the licensee's right to have input into development and maintenance. The open source licenses that I am familiar with do not confer any ownership on the licensees.

3) Under the major open source licenses, licensees are free to fork the project, with certain restrictions, such as identifying the source and inheriting the license.

I support Terry's right to do whatever he wants with his work. That said, I encourage him to consider moving to open source, where he might learn to love the pull request. Probably not all of them, though.

Cary

> On Apr 6, 2015, at 10:49 PM, Roy Tennant <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> I agree with Terry. His decisions on how to deal with his codebase has
> stood the test of time. Open source doesn't mean squat if no one steps up
> to maintain it (and I have some experience with that), so having someone
> dedicated to maintaining it is not a bad strategy. It may not beds the most
> politically correct solution, but so be it. Running (and maintained) code
> trumps everything.
> Roy
> 
> On Mon, Apr 6, 2015 at 6:13 PM, Terry Reese <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Bill,
>> 
>> Sure -- this has been asked before.  In fact, I wrote an article about the
>> responsibilities developers and organizations have, regardless of if they
>> utilize a closed or open source model in the C4L Journal back in 2012:
>> http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/6393.
>> 
>> In my case, it's been two things.  Until around 2006 or 2007, MarcEdit's
>> code libraries were still largely written in assembly so there was very
>> little interest.  But since migrating the code to something more accessible
>> (C#),  I'd have to say that the main reason is that work on the project
>> has, and continues to be, a hobby and avenue for me to pursue something
>> that I happen to be quite passionate about.
>> 
>> --tr
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
>> William Denton
>> Sent: Monday, April 6, 2015 7:46 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Native MarcEdit for MacOSX
>> 
>> On 6 April 2015, Terry Reese wrote:
>> 
>>> What I've offered is that I'd redo the application to provide a native
>>> Mac App that is Mac-Native while still making use of the present
>>> assembly code.  This of course requires a Mac of some kind -- and
>>> since I'm not a Mac user, there it is.  From the users perspective, it
>> should all be Mac-tastic.
>> 
>> I've always been curious, and now seems a good time to ask: I'm sure
>> you've considered, and been asked about, releasing MarcEdit under a free
>> software license, but decided against it.  Why?
>> 
>> Bill
>> --
>> William Denton ↔  Toronto, Canada ↔  https://www.miskatonic.org/
>>