LWN: Comments on "Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement"

Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement

pboddie — Thu, 19 May 2011 14:57:43 +0000

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.

Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement

rahulsundaram — Thu, 19 May 2011 11:35:42 +0000

The FAQ is right in the sense that Fedora Project defines contributors as those with a Fedora account system and in one of the project groups but if you submit a patch via bugzilla, you are in no way bound by any other agreement other than the license under which you submit the patch and that's fine by Fedora because it doesn't require any kind of copyright assignment but merely clarity of licensing and any free software license fits the acceptance criteria. The only real point of the contributor agreement is to have a default license (MIT for code, CC-BY-SA for content) if a Fedora contributor submits something without a license.

Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement

tzafrir — Thu, 19 May 2011 07:53:40 +0000

The FAQ states that all Fedora contributors need to agree to it. So could you please clarify what type of contributions require it?

Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement

rfontana — Thu, 19 May 2011 01:49:31 +0000

> Does one of the possible mix-and-match clauses of the Harmony draft
> language approach adequately cover the Fedora approach? If so which
> specific set of Harmony options do you think is equivalent?

I'll answer that (as principal drafter of the Fedora agreement, and occasional observer of Canonical's Harmony group from the sidelines): None. The unique feature of the Fedora agreement is that it formalizes the right to opt out of the default license (MIT license for code, CC-BY-SA with GPL compatibility for content). The default license is granted by the contributor.

The draft Harmony agreements are, to my knowledge, in all their existing permutations, structured quite differently: Give up your entire copyright interest to one inbound entity (or grant a maximally broad copyright license to one inbound entity). In some permutations, but not others, certain conditions are placed on the inbound entity. Downstream licenses (if any) are granted by the inbound entity. There is no formalized opt-out right, unlike the Fedora agreement.

In the Fedora agreement, there is no named inbound entity - the contributor is understood to be granting the license himself/herself/itself, to (potentially) the entire world (anyone who might possibly participate in and receive material produced by the Fedora Project). Where the default license applies, it is a well-known, standard license. Those who want to opt out of the default licensing system and (say) GPL their contributions are encouraged to do so.

If experimentation with those two very different approaches is "proliferation", I welcome it.

Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement

jg — Wed, 18 May 2011 23:53:12 +0000

For me to recommend any such agreement a) is against my beliefs; b) if I were to want to recommend such an agreement in such cases where someone believes it must exist (which I do not), I'd have to read it carefully and think, which would cause me to become cross-eyed for a few days ;-), as happens anytime I have to read an agreement.

For God's sake, let's not have contributor agreement proliferation to go with license proliferation.

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.

Similar letters accompanied contributions to the Berkeley Software Distribution: I have, for example, in my possession a copy of the letter that accompanied the original X distribution that went onto 4.3BSD.

These letters were one hell of a lot shorter and easier to understand, and I think provides the same kind of thing RH and other corporations care about: that contributions come from people able to make the contribution in the first place, and not some rogue employee unauthorized to do so.

Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement

rahulsundaram — Wed, 18 May 2011 23:32:10 +0000

Note that you don't need to sign the FPCA to contribute. You can just submit patches via bugzilla and slap a copyright license notice if the patch is copyrightable.

Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement

jspaleta — Wed, 18 May 2011 23:31:40 +0000

Accepting as an assumption for the following questions that a contributor agreement will be required by an entity...

Do you like the new Fedora approach enough to encourage other entities to pick it up and reuse it?

Does one of the possible mix-and-match clauses of the Harmony draft language approach adequately cover the Fedora approach? If so which specific set of Harmony options do you think is equivalent?

-jef

Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement

jg — Wed, 18 May 2011 23:15:04 +0000

Note that the objection I made in another recent posting on contributor agreements continues: having to have a separate agreement means another agreement that a lawyer will have to review in a corporation prior to most corporate people being able to contribute.

Contributor agreement proliferation can become as much a problem as license proliferation and is another barrier to entry to contribution to a project.

Be that as it may, I'm pleased Fedora has at least cleaned up the problems I saw (though belatedly).

Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement

rfontana — Wed, 18 May 2011 17:40:57 +0000

For some background on the drafting of this new contributor agreement, see my 2010 article:
http://opensource.com/law/10/6/new-contributor-agreement-...

Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement

jg — Wed, 18 May 2011 17:12:56 +0000

This seems to address the particular issues that made me unwilling to sign the old agreement. (I haven't read it in great detail, however).