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

[David Nalley]

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 4:21 PM, Tom "spot" Callaway
<tcallawa at redhat.com> wrote:
> Hello Fedora! (Is this thing on?)
>
> Sorry for the very wide net, but we wanted to make sure as many members
> of our community could see this as possible.
>
> 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.
>
> The full text of the FPCA, along with a FAQ, can be found here:
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Revised_Fedora_CLA_Draft
>
> Please, take a moment and read the FPCA and the FAQ. It is not a long,
> or overly complicated document, as legal documents go, but it is
> important that all Fedora Contributors read it over and make sure they
> understand it and like it (or can at least agree to it).
>
> Fedora Legal wishes to give the Fedora community a window of time for
> discussion and review of the FPCA. This window is open until May 18,
> 2010 (2010-05-18). After that point, either a revised FPCA will be
> released for review, or we will begin the process of phasing in the FPCA
> and phasing out the Fedora ICLA.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Tom "spot" Callaway, Fedora Legal
>
> P.S. Fedora Legal would like to give a huge thank you to the people
> involved behind the scenes to make the FPCA possible. The primary author
> was Richard Fontana, with feedback from Tom Callaway, Pamela Chestek,
> Paul Frields, and Robert Tiller. Feel free to give them gifts (for
> example, drinks or tasty snacks) as thank yous, although, this is not a
> requirement (legal or otherwise). ;)
> --
> ambassadors mailing list
> ambassadors at lists.fedoraproject.org
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/ambassadors
>

I apologize for coming to this party late.
I started thinking about the recent move of fp.o's content to CC-BY-SA
using the 'nuclear option.' for changing license.

The proposed FPCA seems to eliminate license changes except for
explicitly unlicensed content. (as oxymoronic as explicitly unlicensed
sounds). So for instance, current Docs Projects are explicitly
licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported. In the event that CC-BY-SA 4.0 (or
$othercoolcontentlicenseinfavor) was 50% more awesome and we wanted to
move to it, it would seem that the 'nuclear option' for doing so would
not exist.

So first, is my above understanding correct?
Second, if so, are we sure we want to give up the ability to change
wiki and documentation licensing.

If I am way off base feel free to say so.

David Nalley