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Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free softwareMark Shuttleworth on companies and free softwarePosted May 18, 2011 0:43 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313)In reply to: Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software by jspaleta Parent article: Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software
Jef,
if there is a company doing major development and you don't do copyright assignment and they go under and you want to try your had at proprietary licensing, you have to buy all the copyrights that you don't own. It may be harder to buy copyrights from many different people than to buy them all from one entity (even if it includes things that you wrote to begin with)
there is a fundamental difference in view between the people who assume that assignment (even if joint) is valid and those who do not
those who see it as valid see the organization that manages the copyrights as creating the vast majority of the code, with the other contributers being , if not minor, at least significantly less significant.
those who see it as invalid see the contribution from the outside as being worth at least as much as that generated by the organization.
different projects will have different ratios, but at least initially, almost every project where their is a team of people paid to work on it full time, that team will out-produce the outsiders. Over time the outsiders may become a much larger portion of the development, but if the development really is very lopsided, is it really so unfair?
one thing that assignment avoids is any arguments over if a particular patch is significant enough to warrent copyright on it's own.
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Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software Posted May 18, 2011 1:00 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Again.. talking about assignment without also talking about the license in use is not enough. BSD/MIT/Apache with assignment is a totally different situation than GPL with assignment. Assignment coupled with an automatically "business-friendly" proprietary permissive license is still a level playing field for all contributors. Everyone gets the ability to make a proprietary fork..to take their copy of the ball and go home..any time they want.
It's only when you mix copyleft licensing which strongly implies a co-development model with corporate copyright assignment where things get problematic and inequity arises between contributors. In this case the specific wording of the contributor agreement can matter a lot in terms of weighing the trade-offs...especially if you ever ever want to use the code you are contributing in another project or in another context.
-jef
Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software Posted May 18, 2011 1:14 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I actually haven't seen a contributer agreement that would prohibit you (the code author) from using the code for anything else (or contributing it to another organization). If there is such an agreement, I would oppose it.
but is such an extreme contract even common? much less the norm?
anything that I've seen that was an actual copyright assignment also included a license back to the author to use the code for any purpose or any context.
Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software Posted May 18, 2011 2:00 UTC (Wed) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]
Well, there's one rather significant purpose for which a license back is no use: contributing the same code to another project that also requires copyright assignment.
Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software Posted May 18, 2011 2:07 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
good point.
that's a very good reason for pushing for either joint copyright assignment, or to explicitly give the project the right to dual license the code, or some other mechanism that can give the organization the rights that it is really looking for.
Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software Posted May 18, 2011 3:13 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Right! The devil is in the details. Again I'll point out that Canonical's chosen form of contributor agreement doesn't not provide for dual-ownership or any such nuance. It's a blanket assignment. It's really difficult to take Shuttleworth seriously when Canonical's own assignment requirements are don't consider the complexity of a world where multiple projects are expecting ownership over potentially the same pieces of code that a contributor could be submitting across projects.
-jef
Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software Posted May 18, 2011 3:34 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
The good news is that Mark recognizes that there are problems with their current agreement. Per the article, he considers it "mediocre at best" so there's hope in getting a good one eventually.
isn't that why Cannonical pushed for project harmony? It makes sense to me that while they see a problem with the current agreement, rather than trying to tweak the current agreement they instead try and work out a better document through wider discussion and only after that change their version.
it takes time to figure out how to fix things, but there is plenty of evidence that they are working on this area.
Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software Posted May 18, 2011 4:16 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
He also admitted he's failed to show leadership in making the case for assignment in public. I would not call the closed door nature of Harmony discussions under Chatham House rules "evidence" of progress at all.
As far as I'm concerning Harmony under Chatham House rules was lost time and effort. Harmony is rebooting now with a public mailinglist. We'll see if Mark shows up on that publicly archived list and makes the case for assignment in his renewed effort to show leadership in this area. The continued lack of public discourse from him continues to be disturbing.
-jef
Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software Posted May 25, 2011 10:26 UTC (Wed) by markshuttle (subscriber, #22379) [Link]
The meetings were an open invitation, lots of people both for and against CLA's were present or represented. They were not "closed door" in any sense. Chatham House Rules are a very good device for encouraging people to speak their minds without fear of attribution, and the best way to make progress on complicated discussions when there are inflammatory topics on the table.
Harmony is not "rebooting", it's got a draft which is appropriate for discussion.
FTR, Jake's article fairly represents my commentary. Under the circumstances, with me speaking fast and him taking notes, it's a very reasonable rendition.
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