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

[Richard Fontana]

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.