Fedora website, Red Hat, copyright notices and FPCA

[Rahul Sundaram]

On 06/28/2011 06:40 AM, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> The FPCA was first discussed with the Board before I was on it.  My
> recollection of that time period (from an outsiders perspective) was that
> spot presented the problems with the CLA and gave the FPCA text as
> a replacement that Red Hat Legal would like us to replace it with.
>
> If that's an accurate reflection, then the underlying assumption that the
> text was needed at all would not have been challenged.

Precisely but my question on who is driving this change remains
unanswered, I am not sure this is the case.  This mail talks about Red
Hat Legal,  Fedora Legal and Spot seemingly interchangeably and it is
not clear to me,  who FPCA is supposed to be serving.    My
understanding is that,  Richard Fontana said this was not driven by Red
Hat Legal but Fedora leadership and I am not sure, who this leadership
is.    The Fedora Board has been presented a text and like me,  they
have assumed that this text is needed and driven by Red Hat Legal and
looked at the implementation of it.  On the face of it, this is a
reasonable assumption but I do question whether this is really what
happened. 

> However, the  assumption that a text like the FPCA was needed at all was 
> a subject for consideration when the CLA itself was debated as being needed,
> what constituted "signing" the agreement, etc.  This would have been many
> years ago and lasted for some time -- starting with the fax in CLA,
> progressing through gpg signing, the idea of click through agreement for the
> wiki, form-based signing in FAS, etc.

Sure.  A lot of things were advised earlier and changed entirely.  Red
Hat Legal used to strongly prefer OPL but that seems not to be case
anymore.   The historical perspectives are useful and I am aware of them
but instead of just referring to Red Hat Legal,  Fedora Board needs to
ask,  what is the justification for FPCA and does it serves Fedora's
needs currently.    This isn't a purely legal matter but also a matter
of policy since it is in the best interest of Fedora ( but not
necessarily Red Hat Legal's concern) to lower the barrier to entries to
Fedora whenever possible.    

> a) prominent splash "A Red Hat Community Project".  It seems that this is
> more marketing/PR/a proper acknowledgment of who is supporting us than
> a legal issue.  So the Board probably can consider changing this without
> spot and Red Hat Legal input.  OTOH, I liked the clarification questions
> that Richard Fontana asked here:
> http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/advisory-board/2011-June/010787.html
>
> so it could be good to get a little more dialog there and then present to
> the Board.

Agreed

> b) Copyright notice,  "Red Hat, Inc and others" => "Fedora Project
> Contributors": From the docs list conversation and Richard Fontana's post on
> this list, it seems fine to change this (and the intent the rewording
> expresses is something I like).  spot seems to have reservations, however.
> The best outcome would be for spot and rfontana to talk about this and present
> their opinion on changing to the Board.  Alternately, the Board could
> directly request that spot ask Red Hat Legal if they agree with us changing
> the wording on the Fedora Websites.

Agreed.  I think either (c) Fedora Project contributors or no copyright
notice at all is preferable to the current notice.  

> c) whether the FPCA needs to be signed to contribute to docs/design
> team/etc.  I haven't read anything from Red Hat Legal saying that this
> isn't a good idea to keep enforcing. 

As I have highlighted above,  it is not clear to me that this advise was
driven by Red Hat Legal.  Are you sure about this?  I would note this
doesn't really address any of the concerns I raised about this issue
either.    To summarise the main points:

a) everyone agrees that a explicit license is more clear and generally
preferable
a)  If there is a explicit license already in place,  FPCA is
superfluous layer and not needed. 
c) If spec files, kickstart files etc were already under a explicit like
like MIT (similar to openSUSE spec files),  anyone who wants to reuse
has a clear knowledge of the rights granted.  FPCA hides this
d)  Fedora contributors already deal with licensing on a regular basis (
upstream code,  documentation, design content etc) and publishing a list
of recommendations (c.f
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-recommendations.html)  to address
common use cases will take care of the concern from Spot that a large
number of questions would be raised if FPCA is dropped. 
e) FPCA does not negate the need to educate contributors about licensing
and it doesn't really simplify it much since any content has to be
checked for originality etc
f)  FPCA does not cover one off contributions like a patch submitted via
bugzilla integrated into Fedora packages.   This can and does happen
regularly and explicit license always as a matter of policy is much more
safer

Rahu

Rahul