[TOS] contributors' agreements

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/05/2009 03:32 PM, Ross Gardler wrote:

>> In GNOME we don't require any.  Contributors keep their rights.
>
> Can we please kill this meme.
>
> CLAs are not about assignment of copyright form one party to another.

Let me correct you: they are not *necessarily* about copyright assignment.  In 
real world however, more often than not, they are.


> They are the assignment of rights to sub-licence copyrighted material.
> Without that right to relicense it is not legal to release software
> under a FOSS (or any other) licence.

Again, not necessarily.  If the contributor releases their patch under the 
same license as the original work (which is what we take for granted, but I 
agree, can use a checkbox or something), then the license already gives us the 
right to integrate and release it.  I'm talking about the common Free Software 
/ Open Source licenses here.


> As for your other comments I'd be surprised (and concerned) if GNOME
> did not have a contributor agreement like that found in other major
> open source projects. Bear in mind most of these foundations share at
> least some of the same legal counsel, the SFLC. who say:

We (GNOME Foundation) don't.  Period.


> "In general, the most important reason to contribute copyrights to the
> project is to enable the project to enforce the license. Unifying
> ownership of the copyrights gives the project indisputable enforcement
> power that is both simple and clear. If copyright ownership is
> scattered throughout a developer community spanning many countries and
> years, enforcement efforts face additional barriers." (note this does
> not necessarily mean copyright assignment)

GNOME is a SFLC client.  But I don't agree.  GNOME Foundation does not own the 
copyright to a single line of code, neither does it have any right more than 
what's granted to any arbitrary individual or entity under the license.

Our right holders are the Red Hats and Novells and IBMs and Suns and thousands 
of different individuals.  Incidentally, those companies are much better 
geared to go about license enforcement than GNOME Foundation is.


> and
>
> "Another reason to unify copyrights is to avoid and prevent later
> competing copyright claims, such as claims that could be made by
> employers or developers of proprietary software.  A project’s
> copyright assignment process should include questions and instructions
> designed to identify code with ownership issues, and the code intake
> process should include mechanisms for dealing with such issues."

Clarification always helps.  But I don't see how that "unification" avoids the 
issue of later competing copyright claims at all.


> See http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/foss-primer.html#x1-110002.3
> for more.
>
> We really should not be making glib statements and sending messages to
> students that do not communicate this professional advice.

It's SFLC's advice, and I respect that.  But it's not g-d's word.  Different 
projects have different views on this.

behdad

> It's a risk management issue, not a "do or don't". I repeat again that
> the decision should be based on the amount of IP in a patch, not about
> an across the board policy.
>
> Ross
>