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

[Richard Fontana]

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 10:51:21PM +0200, Mathieu Bridon wrote:
> Let's say I submit a spec file after this FPCA is accepted : it is
> automatically licensed under the terms or the current default license:
> MIT.
> 
> A month later, the default license changes to GPLv3. If I understand
> the above paragraph correctly, this means that my spec file remains
> licensed as MIT, not GPLv3?

Actually, it becomes explicitly dual-licensed under MIT and
GPLv3. (Since the MIT-license is universally considered
GPL-compatible, this is not a very interesting dual license.)
 
> Now, if I update my package, and thus modify the spec file, does it
> remain forever under the terms of the MIT or does this new change
> constitutes a new contribution and hence, the spec file is now GPLv3?
> (it seems like the former would make it pretty hard to track what
> license each spec file^W^WContribution is under at a given time)

The modified spec file is solely under GPLv3, in this example. The
portions that were in the original spec file, if you can identify
them, can be said to remain under the MIT license (in addition to
GPLv3).

> Not that I have any concerns about this, I would just like to
> understand correctly the FPCA (me not speak legalese fluent ;)

If there is any unnecessary legalese we should correct that; we tried
to draft this so that it could be easily understood by Fedora
contributors.

- RF

-- 
Richard E. Fontana
Red Hat, Inc.