I was trying to point at the new project contributor agreement (FPCA), can mainly find Richard's article on the topic[0] and the draft[1]. So I was going to ask what the status was, then I read this ...
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Licenses#The_Contributor_License_Agreem...
The purpose of the Contributor License Agreement (CLA) is to establish copyright control under Red Hat, Inc. on behalf of the Fedora Project. By having a single entity hold copyright: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It goes on to summarize several points that sound inaccurate to me (I'm not sure our CLA allows us to relicense, I believe we sub-license, and it's a bit sketchy and not worth cheering about IMHO; second point seems sketchy, I don't see how the CLA stops someone from suing anyone, it just makes Red Hat a big target; third point seems accurate but a bit rough.)
Regardless, the first paragraph is wildly inaccurate with both the CLA and the intention of the Fedora Project, not even to mention the intention of Red Hat.
Is this something that needs correcting? Can someone with editing auth do it?
Not sure how long that sentence has been there[1], but it may explain why people think Fedora and Red Hat are trying to get copyright assignment.
cheers - Karsten
[1] It looks like it came with the import from the MoinMoin wiki in May 2008; this diff shows the import on the left and the last revision on the right, and there has been no change to the section in question:
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Legal%3ALicenses&diff=137252...
On Mon, Sep 06, 2010 at 06:59:07PM -0700, Karsten Wade wrote:
I was trying to point at the new project contributor agreement (FPCA), can mainly find Richard's article on the topic[0] and the draft[1]. So I was going to ask what the status was, then I read this ...
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Licenses#The_Contributor_License_Agreem...
The purpose of the Contributor License Agreement (CLA) is to establish copyright control under Red Hat, Inc. on behalf of the Fedora Project. By having a single entity hold copyright: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It goes on to summarize several points that sound inaccurate to me (I'm not sure our CLA allows us to relicense, I believe we sub-license, and it's a bit sketchy and not worth cheering about IMHO; second point seems sketchy, I don't see how the CLA stops someone from suing anyone, it just makes Red Hat a big target; third point seems accurate but a bit rough.)
Regardless, the first paragraph is wildly inaccurate with both the CLA and the intention of the Fedora Project, not even to mention the intention of Red Hat.
I agree completely (except to say that the reference to "relicensing" probably means 'changing the sublicensing terms used by Red Hat to other sublicensing terms' and as such is kind of accurate - cf. Fedora docs relicensing).
I pointed these problems out before - I wrote the unsigned comments on the talk page: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal_talk:Licenses
Regarding that third point, I'm not sure if that's simply restating the first point or expressing something else. I guess it's true, but the Fedora docs relicensing shows that in practice such power isn't really exercised without making reasonable efforts to notify copyright holders and provide opportunities to object or opt out.
Anyway the proposed FPCA would make it obsolete. :-)
While we're at it, let's please also delete the sentence:
At this time, all license agreements shown are governed by the contractual laws of the State of North Carolina and the intellectual property laws of the United States of America, unless otherwise indicated.
- RF
On Mon, Sep 06, 2010 at 11:51:00PM -0400, Richard Fontana wrote:
On Mon, Sep 06, 2010 at 06:59:07PM -0700, Karsten Wade wrote:
I was trying to point at the new project contributor agreement (FPCA), can mainly find Richard's article on the topic[0] and the draft[1]. So I was going to ask what the status was, then I read this ...
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Licenses#The_Contributor_License_Agreem...
The purpose of the Contributor License Agreement (CLA) is to establish copyright control under Red Hat, Inc. on behalf of the Fedora Project. By having a single entity hold copyright: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It goes on to summarize several points that sound inaccurate to me (I'm not sure our CLA allows us to relicense, I believe we sub-license, and it's a bit sketchy and not worth cheering about IMHO; second point seems sketchy, I don't see how the CLA stops someone from suing anyone, it just makes Red Hat a big target; third point seems accurate but a bit rough.)
Regardless, the first paragraph is wildly inaccurate with both the CLA and the intention of the Fedora Project, not even to mention the intention of Red Hat.
I agree completely (except to say that the reference to "relicensing" probably means 'changing the sublicensing terms used by Red Hat to other sublicensing terms' and as such is kind of accurate - cf. Fedora docs relicensing).
I pointed these problems out before - I wrote the unsigned comments on the talk page: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal_talk:Licenses
Ah, thanks. I'll also put a note about this discussion, just to keep the circle complete. I came directly here because I could see the text hadn't been changed and needed attention.
Regarding that third point, I'm not sure if that's simply restating the first point or expressing something else. I guess it's true, but the Fedora docs relicensing shows that in practice such power isn't really exercised without making reasonable efforts to notify copyright holders and provide opportunities to object or opt out.
Anyway the proposed FPCA would make it obsolete. :-)
Not trying to push the river's flow, just curious what the status of the new FPCA is?
While we're at it, let's please also delete the sentence:
At this time, all license agreements shown are governed by the contractual laws of the State of North Carolina and the intellectual property laws of the United States of America, unless otherwise indicated.
Again, I'll make these notes in the Talk: page, but I don't have the auth to edit the [[Legal:Licenses]] page itself.
- Karsten
On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 12:50 AM, Karsten Wade kwade@redhat.com wrote:
On Mon, Sep 06, 2010 at 11:51:00PM -0400, Richard Fontana wrote:
Anyway the proposed FPCA would make it obsolete. :-)
Not trying to push the river's flow, just curious what the status of the new FPCA is?
I do believe we'll be getting it soon after F-14 goes out of the door. Presumably we don't want to rock the boat of contributor agreement this close to a release and risk losing manpower on critical packages.
On 09/21/2010 06:50 PM, Karsten Wade wrote:
Not trying to push the river's flow, just curious what the status of the new FPCA is?
We'll be enacting it shortly after Fedora 14. I had planned to do it before now, but Jesse's cvs->git conversion was intrusive enough without me forcing more red tape through everyone at once.
While we're at it, let's please also delete the sentence:
At this time, all license agreements shown are governed by the contractual laws of the State of North Carolina and the intellectual property laws of the United States of America, unless otherwise indicated.
Again, I'll make these notes in the Talk: page, but I don't have the auth to edit the [[Legal:Licenses]] page itself.
I really wouldn't bother. We're not going to change the old ICLA before we enact the new FPCA.
~spot
On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 10:35:38AM -0400, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
On 09/21/2010 06:50 PM, Karsten Wade wrote:
While we're at it, let's please also delete the sentence:
At this time, all license agreements shown are governed by the contractual laws of the State of North Carolina and the intellectual property laws of the United States of America, unless otherwise indicated.
Again, I'll make these notes in the Talk: page, but I don't have the auth to edit the [[Legal:Licenses]] page itself.
I really wouldn't bother. We're not going to change the old ICLA before we enact the new FPCA.
The text seemed to apply to more than just the old ICLA. The full text is:
The text of some license agreements may be found below. At this time, all license agreements shown are governed by the contractual laws of the State of North Carolina and the intellectual property laws of the United States of America, unless otherwise indicated.
A full list of licenses and how they interact with Fedora is available on the Licensing page.
This is currently followed by references to the 'Fedora License Agreement', CC-BY-SA, and the ICLA. I assume this text was never meant to apply to the list of licenses on the Licensing page, which would at best be bizarre. The 'Fedora License Agreement' already has a North Carolina choice-of-law clause in it[1]. As regards website content and documentation, the text is from the unfortunate OPL era and predates the adoption of CC-BY-SA. Fedora deliberately chose the 'Unported' variety of CC-BY-SA and a clause that purports to select North Carolina law seems to clash with that sentiment. Moreover, the effectiveness of such text is rather dubious anyway.
So, the Fedora Project can keep this sentence on that wiki page if it wants, but let the world know that Red Hat disavows it. :-)
- RF
[1]The RHEL EULA on which it is modeled abandoned NC choice of law in favor of NY choice of law some years ago.
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Karsten Wade -
Michel Alexandre Salim -
Richard Fontana -
Tom Callaway