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Fedora project switching to new contributor agreementFedora project switching to new contributor agreementPosted May 19, 2011 14:57 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784)In reply to: Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement by jg Parent article: Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement
Note that in the history of the old X Consortium, we had a different solution that required no acceptance of an explicit set of terms and conditions of an agreement such as these or other contributor agreements; significant contributions were accompanied by a letter that asserted that the person providing the contribution was authorized/able to do so and that the person doing the submission understood that the software was indeed going to be distributed under the terms of their license or that of other copyright licenses present in their code. I think this is more or less the case for organisations like the Python Software Foundation: there's something you sign which says that "this is my work and I am allowed to release it" and that you are offering it under a selection of licences. One has to wonder why this kind of thing isn't good enough for other organisations. I think there's a vested interest for some people to claim that such declarations somehow aren't good enough, leading down the slippery slope (seen elsewhere recently) that ends with a sentiment like, "To be on the safe side and to safeguard the future of the project, we should really own all the code." The worrying thing is that newcomers and people not versed in licensing issues think that this is the way things should be, or are normally, done.
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