It seems some users are not optimistic about the future of an Open Source LiveJournal, especially in light of the recent changes to their Social Contract ( “They completely gutted the Free Software section.”), which was supposedly changed because “Lawyers didn’t like ‘contract’ in the name ‘social contract’ because it does not have the structure of a contract.” Seems to work for Debian though, which has lawyers out the wazoo.
All volunteer work is owned by Lj, too, according to the TOS.
” … By accepting these Terms of Service, any LiveJournal.com member agrees that the intellectual content created as a result of volunteer work for LiveJournal.com constitutes intellectual property of LiveJournal.com and that all rights in said content shall vest in LiveJournal.com at the time that it is created, to the extent permitted by law. If laws prevent such vesting, the volunteer makes assignment of all such rights to LiveJournal.com at the time of creation… ”
It is sad to see doors closing. Most of the legalese is just that, but it is hard to gloss over something written down in the TOS. The recent acquisition might be good in LJ’s interest – they get professional management. It will be great if the open-sourceness remains, though, and the spirit of open source survives.
Duplicating LJ’s success, and numbers starting from the open-sourced source code will be no mean feat, and I always thought LJ’s greatest strength was it’s volunteers and user base.
I hope 6A and LJ work together and everything turns out the better.
Whoa, is that even legal?
This is all so depressing.
In my opinion SA did this to compete on a more personal level with WP. I can guarantee you they love having an
“open source” project in their portfolio if they don’t treat it like open source. probably going to use this in some googlish marketing campaign against us rebeling wpers.