[Fedora-legal-list] contributor agreements and a wiki mistake

[Karsten Wade]

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_Agreement
> > 
> >   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
-- 
name:  Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Sr. Community Gardener
team:                Red Hat Community Architecture 
uri:               http://TheOpenSourceWay.org/wiki
gpg:                                       AD0E0C41
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