[TOS] Textbook authors: Copyright Assignment, please respond

[Frank Hecker]

2009/9/22 Karsten Wade <kwade at redhat.com>:
> Can you clarify for me how this is supposed to work with blending
> content between CLA-yes and CLA-no?
>
> For example, Mr. Able wants his IP managed under a CLA, and Ms. Baker
> prefers to just license it directly under the CC-BY-SA.  They both are
> going to work together on a chapter, pulling in content from OSS
> Watch, which is also managed under the CLA.  This content is blended
> in to a single chapter.  How do you sort out later if there is a
> question that would be resolved with the CLA, but Ms. Baker's IP is
> all over the place under a single license?

That would be a problem. A CLA scheme works best if everyone is under
it, so that there's a single entity that can have responsibility for
holding the associated rights (i.e., those granted under the CLA) and
licensing the content to the general public. In the absence of that
then a CLA is much less useful.

A possible alternative would be to require that everyone contributing
to a given chapter sign a CLA, but I'm not sure that would be either
practical or useful.

Frank

-- 
Frank Hecker