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in defense of "contributor agreements" or whatever they are called nowadaysin defense of "contributor agreements" or whatever they are called nowadaysPosted Apr 12, 2011 7:09 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)In reply to: in defense of "contributor agreements" or whatever they are called nowadays by zooko Parent article: Project Harmony decloaks
I don't think you can ignore the ample examples of major projects including Openoffice.org, Upstart and Java where copyright assignment agreements have caused significant strain on the project and forks or alternatives that explicitly promote the fact that there is no copyright assignment required in their projects. Libreoffice and systemd being the most recent examples of this.
Yes, you might able to get away with it and yes, it might not have affected your project much but it is not easy to assert that and I do wonder how many didn't even bother to send patches because they were aware of this requirement. If you want to lower the barrier to entry and create a neutral ground for all contributors that doesn't favor one company or individual over other, then I would certainly recommend that you consider dropping it.
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in defense of "contributor agreements" or whatever they are called nowadays Posted Apr 13, 2011 3:11 UTC (Wed) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] In the upstart -- systemd case there was not really a fork (there are several "dependency-based" init systems floating around in any case), but a fundamental technical difference in handling of dependencies. The other cases are as you state, AFAIU.
in defense of "contributor agreements" or whatever they are called nowadays Posted Apr 13, 2011 3:54 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
I did say forks or alternatives. You seem to have overlooked that.
in defense of "contributor agreements" or whatever they are called nowadays Posted Apr 13, 2011 16:31 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
I still think its a stretch to lump in systemd and upstart into this argument. I think the difference of opinion there is primarily one of technical design not the politics of copyright. The assignment issues around upstart may have complicated things and kept people from communicating, but I'm not sure removing the assignment policy would have changed the course of events. At least that is my reading of things.
I think it weakens the argument you are making to include them as examples, unless you can point to some sort of previous discussion in the context of upstart development where good-faith contributions from contributors were turned aside by the assignment policy requirement. I'm not aware of that ever happening.
I think what is happening right now with LibreOffice stands up by itself as an unfolding relevant case study to make the point.
Though I would like to see if the clutter development experience has something interesting to add. When clutter dropped its assignment policy did contributor activity rise in a noticable way?
A certain individual has argued in private with me that business entities,such as the one that previously required assignment to clutter, only drop the assignment requirements after they are no longer incentivised to lead the development. Essentially the argument made to me was that dropping assignment is a "we wash our hands of it..throw it over the wall..and let the community have the scraps" action on the part of most business entities. Pardon me from interpretatively paraphrasing from a private conversation. I did have the foresight to obtained permission to archive and republish the short conversation. You can read the argument in the context of the conversation from Sept, 2010 here:
I don't think opinions on the matter have changed. The people who walked into the Harmony discussion in favor of for-profit assignment still feel that way. The people who came in against it, still feel that way.
Nor do I think Harmony as drafted are going to change the character of the dispute. Harmony is a codification of the battlelines. I know some people are _hopeful_ that some for-profit entities who switch from in-house contributor agreements to Harmony drafted agreements will be choosing more contributor friendly options. But I don't see any evidence of that. And I don't plan to give any for-profit entity the benefit of the doubt on that score. Whether you choose a Harmony statement or not is not important. It is the specific choice and the details that matter. I don't plan to pat any entity on the back for choosing a Harmony option that requires assignment to a for-profit with sufficient promisebacks to protect the long term interests of the uncompensated contributor.
The Harmony drafts allow for pretty much all the bad for-profit behaviour that is currently allowed now. At best Harmony will make it easier to identify. At worst Harmony will give for-profits political cover that they can hide behind when their choose unfair/unbalanced assignment policies instead of the more reasonable Harmony options.
-jef
in defense of "contributor agreements" or whatever they are called nowadays Posted Apr 13, 2011 17:26 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
"I think it weakens the argument you are making to include them as examples, unless you can point to some sort of previous discussion in the context of upstart development where good-faith contributions from contributors were turned aside by the assignment policy requirement. I'm not aware of that ever happening."
Technical design might be the more important reason for systemd but it is clear that copyright assignment requirements played a role and while what you have suggested is one way to look for the impact, I think it is far from the only way. For instance, the questions one can ask include, how many developers were turned away from ever submitting patches because of the requirement? Among the active systemd developers, which ones felt more motivated to systemd because it explicitly advertised the fact that no copyright assigned is required? Did it influence adoption by distributions? and so on. I don't purport to know the answers to these questions but I disagree that it is not a valid example although it might not be as big a instance as Openoffice.org vs Libreoffice.
in defense of "contributor agreements" or whatever they are called nowadays Posted Apr 13, 2011 17:34 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
"What ifs" when it comes to trying to estimate the number of people who refused to engage because of assignment is difficult to use effectively as a rhetorical tool. We don't have a reliable measure or even estimate on that. From a strategic messaging standpoint I shun making that particular argument unless I can find at least one example of a specific contribution submitted in good faith which was turned away because an assignment wasn't agreed to. I have such historic examples for other codebases that require assignment. I don't have one handy for upstart.
-jef
in defense of "contributor agreements" or whatever they are called nowadays Posted Apr 13, 2011 18:07 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
My goal is not rhetoric or strategic messaging or whatever. I can reliably point out that when systemd was launched, the first blog post describing the project pointed out the lack of copyright assignment as a advantage when comparing itself to upstart and it is clear that developers involved view it as such. No doubt about that and that by itself establishes the negative impact.
Whether patches submitted to a project were rejected on the basis of such a requirement is not a very interesting way to measure the impact as far as I am concerned because anyone who looks at contributing to a project and realizes there is a requirement to assign copyright would just not bother submitting any patches in the first place. If you are interested enough, you can talk to the developers involved and find out more. I have but there is no public reference for you so you will have to do the leg work yourself to find out more.
in defense of "contributor agreements" or whatever they are called nowadays Posted Apr 13, 2011 18:06 UTC (Wed) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link]
> I do wonder how many didn't even bother to send patches because they were aware of this requirement.
I'm pretty sure this wasn't the case, as we didn't publicly mention this requirement anywhere.
in defense of "contributor agreements" or whatever they are called nowadays Posted Apr 13, 2011 18:40 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
I remember discussing the strategies for copyright assignment for this project with you right here in LWN which is a public forum and if you haven't mentioned such a requirement in the developer oriented documentation, you should and do so prominently. I would consider it cheating and would be deeply disappointed if I spend time and effort writing a patch for a project only for the maintainers to let me know after the fact, that need me to sign over a legal agreement that grants them rights to use the code however they please before accepting my patch.
in defense of "contributor agreements" or whatever they are called nowadays Posted Apr 13, 2011 20:08 UTC (Wed) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link]
It's not so much a "requirement" as a polite request. Two people politely declined, around a dozen or so (including all of the most prolific and valuable contributors) readily agreed. I don't want to complicate the developer documentation and distract people from writing code by adding that fact to the developer documentation.
Which, I suppose, definitely proves one of the points against such contributor agreements. Perhaps I should reconsider and add a mention about that to the developer docs.
in defense of "contributor agreements" or whatever they are called nowadays Posted Apr 13, 2011 21:01 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Requests are entirely different than a codified requirement.
I think its entirely ethical for a central authority, even a for-profit one, to make that sort of request as long as they contributor really does have the ability to say no. As long as the incorporation of contribution in question is not held up because of a lack of requested assignment, then I don't see a problem with.
I have no problem with contributors choosing to gift their copyrights as long as its a gift freely given with no explicit or implicit strings attached with regard to their standing as a contributor or the incorporation of their submitted work.
-jef
in defense of "contributor agreements" or whatever they are called nowadays Posted Apr 14, 2011 5:02 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
"It's not so much a "requirement" as a polite request."
Unless you would accept a patch without the contributor signing the legal agreement, I would say it is still a requirement albeit a politely worded one. There is nothing inherently wrong with requirements as long as they are explicit.
in defense of "contributor agreements" or whatever they are called nowadays Posted Apr 14, 2011 14:54 UTC (Thu) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link]
Actually we *did* accept patches to add-on modules without this grant of rights. I don't actually *know* if we would similarly accept patches to the core without that grant of rights. Maybe somebody reading this should test my resolve by writing some really awesome patches and then offering to support them in Tahoe-LAFS but not to grant us all the rights. :-)
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