Project Harmony

Project Harmony

I don't find its sub-optimalability to be a reason for publishing a sensational hypothesis, the better and pragmatic approach is probably to try and actually do something about fixing it, constructively.

Well, it looks like an open-and-shut case to me: Canonical's position is that there's no other way that would work on a global basis, so that's the way it is. As for sensationalism, there's a single contributor agreement for a huge list of projects which, aside from various valid points made elsewhere about balancing project and contributor interests according to each project's specific profile, looks like quite a land grab at first glance.

If my recollection is correct, Canonical are underwriting just such an initiative, called (for want of a better name), "Project Harmony"—where the intent is not to discuss the perceived merits (or disadvantages) of Copyright assignment, but on how to make the process annoy the least number of people when it does crop up.

Sure, lots of projects usually decide to adopt some kind of contributor agreement, and it arguably makes sense to prevent "agreement proliferation", but the agreement in question isn't a great advertisement for the company leading such an initiative. And they could have waited until the eventual demise of Apache Harmony before stealing its name.