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Randal: A Brief History of Harmony
Here's a
first-person account of the Harmony Project as told by Allison Randal.
"So, I started asking tough questions, and what I found was both
better and worse than I expected. I found that no one at Canonical had a
bizarre agenda to force copyright assignment on the world. I also found
that Canonical had an interest in replacing their current contributor
agreement with a Harmony one, and that 'success' for them was measured in
community-driven, community-approved, and community-adopted agreements. All
good. I also found that Harmony was pretty much stalled, all meetings on
hold, waiting on a draft with some changes requested by the Harmony group
(substantial changes, but shouldn't have taken terribly long). Not
good."
(Log in to post comments)
Randal: A Brief History of Harmony Posted Apr 12, 2011 23:32 UTC (Tue) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link] I found that no one at Canonical had a bizarre agenda to force copyright assignment on the world.Just a perfectly straightforward desire to give their distinctly un-community minded policies a coat of community coloured paint.
Randal: A Brief History of Harmony Posted Apr 13, 2011 12:02 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
I don't doubt the intention is good. Still, I think copyright assignments are bad. A lot is based on the view Michael Meeks has. Suggest to watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Olx3EvJMl0 (really good and positive explanation).
Only result of Project Harmony is to make sure the position GNOME took (was announced a while back) is clearly documented. I've checked and clarified https://live.gnome.org/ProjectPrerequisites (=a page containing requirements to be hosted on GNOME infrastructure). Someone changed it into a politcally correct version (ask the board).. but in practice: I am never going to make any effort for a _new_ module which has copyright assignments (the sysadmin bit to trust someone and give that person a Git account). This as I think it is in the best interest to not have copyright assignments.
I think the actual trend is to do away with copyright assignments. Clutter on our request and a lot of effort on the developers part to get approval for this. Evolution did away with that years ago. LibreOffice seems to really have taken off now.
Contributor agreement != copyright assignment Posted Apr 13, 2011 14:42 UTC (Wed) by david.a.wheeler (guest, #72896) [Link]
There are actually *FOUR* draft agreements posted by Harmony. Two are just "contributor agreements" that seem to just assert that you're legally allowed to contribute but do NOT assign copyright. Two others DO assign copyright.
I agree that copyright assignment is dangerous, but some projects want them; I'd rather there be a standard form, if there must be one. And contributor agreements without copyright assignment are something a *LOT* of organizations want, and for those I *definitely* want some consensus.
Contributor agreement != copyright assignment Posted Apr 13, 2011 14:58 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Maybe organizations want this, but I do not. Contributor agreements still require signing; I don't like that (Michael Meeks also explains that). Remember needing to sign something to get commit access at Mozilla (for Bugzilla). I wouldn't do so anymore. Especially when you discover it is actually better not to have Bugzilla commit access (in short: very strict on what is accepted; same for committers and random people). Needing to sign is just annoying and IMO (and seeing the presentation), you should avoid such barriers.
So no doubt the intention is good, but I still think it will have a bad effect (presention explains it much better than I can).
I like the GNOME environment: Git access = commit access to everything. Getting Git access is enough of a barrier.
I believe it is better to explain that it will create a big barrier than Project Harmony. In the end, it still requires signing, no matter if stuff is standarized or not.
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