[Fedora-legal-list] Request for Comments: Fedora Project Contributor Agreement Draft (Replacement for Fedora Individual Contributor License Agreement)

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On 04/19/2010 09:11 PM, inode0 wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 3:21 PM, Tom "spot" Callaway
> <tcallawa at redhat.com> wrote:
>> For some time now, Fedora has been working with Red Hat Legal to come up
>> with a replacement for the Fedora Individual Contributor License
>> Agreement (aka, the Fedora ICLA). As a result, the Fedora Project
>> Contributor Agreement (FPCA) has been approved by Red Hat Legal, and is
>> now being presented to the Fedora Community for comments and discussion.
> 
> Tom,
> 
> Since any choice of a single default license for code is likely to be
> viewed by some as making some sort of a statement could you explain a
> little bit about the rationale for selecting the MIT License variant
> that was chosen as the initial default covering code contributions
> that are submitted without license preference?
> 
> I presume Red Hat Legal is fine with any free license?! Who selected
> the MIT License?

I was the one who recommended MIT, because:

1. It is extremely permissive, possibly the most common "permissive"
Free license.
2. Unlike many of the major common Free licenses (GPL, Apache, MPL), it
is pretty much universally compatible with other Free licenses.
3. It is very very similar to the "license" that we were using for
unlicensed contributions with the old Fedora ICLA.

That particular MIT variant was chosen on the merits of its legal wording.

When we looked at content licensing, there was a much smaller set of
licenses to consider. We wanted to use a license that was permissive and
as compatible as possible with other content licensing. That narrowed it
down pretty quickly to the Creative Commons licenses, and given the fact
that the wiki had already switched to CC-BY-SA, we decided to go with
it. The waiver of clause 4d was done when Red Hat Legal determined it
had the potential, if enacted, to make the work non-free.

And of course, it is important to note that this only applies to code
contributions made without any licensing already in place. If you would
prefer that a different license be used for your contribution (and you
are the copyright holder), then by licensing your contribution
explicitly, you avoid falling under this conditional. :)

With that said, if people feel strongly that a different license should
have been used, we're certainly listening, and will take that feedback
under advisement.

~spot