Who owns rclone? Would it be considered proprietary?

imthenachoman · May 17, 2023, 1:13pm

I am trying to understand who owns rclone?

Would rclone be considered proprietary? I know the code is open source, and anyone can contribute, but someone ultimately has to approve the commits. So there must be some logic that dictates who owns it.

Animosity022 · May 17, 2023, 1:16pm

You can see who is the owner:

License info:

albertony · May 17, 2023, 1:24pm

And this, which more specifically indicates who can approve commits etc:

github.com

rclone/rclone/blob/master/MAINTAINERS.md

# Maintainers guide for rclone #

Current active maintainers of rclone are:

| Name             | GitHub ID         | Specific Responsibilities    |
| :--------------- | :---------------- | :--------------------------  |
| Nick Craig-Wood  | @ncw              | overall project health       |
| Stefan Breunig   | @breunigs         |                              |
| Ishuah Kariuki   | @ishuah           |                              |
| Remus Bunduc     | @remusb           | cache backend                |
| Fabian Möller    | @B4dM4n           |                              |
| Alex Chen        | @Cnly             | onedrive backend             |
| Sandeep Ummadi   | @sandeepkru       | azureblob backend            |
| Sebastian Bünger | @buengese         | jottacloud, yandex & compress backends |
| Ivan Andreev     | @ivandeex         | chunker & mailru backends    |
| Max Sum          | @Max-Sum          | union backend                |
| Fred             | @creativeprojects | seafile backend              |
| Caleb Case       | @calebcase        | storj backend                |
| wiserain         | @wiserain         | pikpak backend               |

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imthenachoman · May 17, 2023, 2:28pm

Neither of those speak to the owner. Author does not necessarily mean owner. And copyright/license also doesn't translate to ownership.

I guess what I'm really trying to figure out is, would rclone's encryption format be considered proprietary even though the source code is open source. Everything I know says it would be, but maybe I am wrong.

Animosity022 · May 17, 2023, 2:32pm

The author is the owner in this case which is why I shared it.

I'm not sure even he can answer a legal question. You'd probably want to get proper legal advice depending on what you want to do/re-use/etc.

Check the license page as the encryption is part of rclone and part of the license.

ncw · May 17, 2023, 3:28pm

This is what Bing Chat says which I think is a pretty good answer

Q: Is open source software proprietry?

No, open source software is not proprietary. Open source software is software developed and maintained via open collaboration, and made available, typically at no cost, for anyone to use, examine, alter and redistribute however they like. Proprietary software, on the other hand, is software that is owned by its original creator and licensed to users under certain terms and conditions that usually restrict its modification and distribution. For example, Microsoft 365 is a proprietary software suite that requires a subscription fee to use, while LibreOffice is an open source software suite that is free to download and modify.

imthenachoman · May 17, 2023, 3:48pm

I didn't think of that. Thanks. Works for me!

system · June 16, 2023, 3:49pm

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