Starting with 0.54, DocMGR's patch acceptance policy has changed. This is due to outside interest in the project by companies wishing to incorporate DocMGR into their own projects. Rest assured, DocMGR will still remain licensed under the GPL. However, as of 0.54, it is possible for an outside party to purchase a separate license to develop DocMGR in their own closed-source project. I have been approached several times regarding this over the past couple of years, and would now like to accomodate such requests.
What does this mean for other developers? Basically, if you wish code to be accepted into the core DocMGR distribution, you'll need to sign and fax/email a disclaimer waiving ownership rights of your submitted code to me before the code can be merged into the codebase. This disclaimer will be made available on the DocMGR website. This only has to be done once per contributor. This is similar to the patch acceptance process followed by the open-source project Asterisk.
What am I signing? The disclaimer is very simple. If you sign it, you are basically releasing your code into the public domain. This means that if a development license for DocMGR is sold to a third-party, they have the right to use your contributed code however they see fit (even if it's in a means outside the GPL). Again, I would like to re-iterate that I have no intention of taking DocMGR itself out of the GPL. This just allows outside companies to purchase a licensed copy to implement in their own applications in whatever manner they wish.
Developers not wishing to sign may still generate their own modules to work with DocMGR which are not included in the main distribution. We can even post links to these modules in the forums or on the DocMGR wiki (coming soon). DocMGR's module-based architecture caters to this. Also, language files are not considered part of the core distribution, so a waiver does not have to be signed to submit one. The waiver also does not encompass patches submitted to the sourceforge website for others to use. Patches/modifications that wish to be included in the core DocMGR distribution must be submitted to me directly.
The disclaimer is available below. Once signed, it can be emailed to me at elawman@eastwestp.com. If you cannot scan-to-email, please email me directly for my fax number.
Thanks for all your help.
Eric.
Click here to download the disclaimer.