General questions about this project
Nagios Enterprises own the Nagios Plugins project, hence the domain names of the site belong to Nagios Enterprises. However, the Nagios Plugins Development Team are responsible for the running of the project. This means that decisions about the web site and the development of code related to the project are handled independently by the team.
The Nagios Plugins is currently distributed using the GNU General Public License version 2.
There is a task to convert the project to be under GPLv3. This is because some C code that we depend upon, from the GNUlib project, is under GPLv3 and therefore some of our C plugins also need to be GPLv3.
So the team has decided rather than having a mixed license, we'll distribute the core Nagios Plugins code as GPLv3.
This page will be updated when this has been completed.
Currently, the copyrights for individual files and plugins are mixed. Sometimes, they are copyrighted to the individual that originally wrote the plugin, though any new changes are copyrighted by the Nagios Plugin Development Team (as listed on Sourceforge).
All code is released under the GPLv2.
There is a task to ensure all code is owned (solely or dual copyright) to the Nagios Plugins Development Team, to avoid confusion about ownership in future. This page will be updated to reflect when this has been completed.
All new code will be copyright to the Nagios Plugins Development team. A disclaimer is shown when submitting a new patch to Sourceforge which says:
By submitting a patch, you are stating that:
* this is your own work or you have full rights to publish and license it
* that it can be released under the GPL
If your patch is accepted, we will:
* add a comment with your name when committing to version control
* add your name to the list of contributors in the THANKS file
The reason for copyright ownership is simple: individuals come and go, but the team takes on responsibility for code changes forever. Ambiguity about ownership then causes difficulties later. We are pre-empting issues now by having clarity that the team owns and will be responsible for changes to the core code.
Of course you can! This is an open source project!
Ideally, raise a tracker item in Sourceforge, so your patch doesn't get lost. Then chase up via the nagiosplug-devel mailing list, if nothing happens. But be aware, this project is run by volunteers, so there is not necessarily immediate response!
By submitting a patch, you are stating that:
If you disagree with handing over copyright, it maybe possible to dual copyright your change - please ask on the nagiosplug-devel mailing list.
We require the copyright ownership for legal reasons.
If your patch is accepted, we will:
The Nagios Plugins team are accepting donations for the project. We have a separate Paypal account that is used for donations, which is administered by the team leader and the deputy.
Donations go towards paying for the small administrative charges we have, such as DNS registration costs. We also use some of the funds for team beer when we meet up in person (which is not often enough :( ).
On Matthias' suggestion, on the 1st April every year, we will donate 10% of the current fund to a charity of our choice. The charity will be listed on this page.