On Dec 01, 2012, at 07:21 AM, Clint Byrum wrote: >Just any FYI, Canonical no longer requires copyright assignment in their >CLA. You are still giving Canonical an unlimited perpetual license on the >code, but you retain your own copyrights.
FTR: http://www.canonical.com/contributors with embedded links to the actual CLA for individuals and entities (in PDF form), as well as a FAQ. This one seems particularly relevant to the current discussion: 7. What’s different between the new contributor agreement and the old one? One difference between the two is that the old agreement was a copyright assignment agreement (where the contributor granted ownership of the contribution to Canonical), while the new one is a copyright license agreement (where the contributor grants permission for Canonical to distribute the contribution). One new element is a promise back to the contributor to release their contribution under the license in place when they made the contribution. The new agreement also features some refinements in the language around software patents and in how the contributor disclaims warranties. What I like about this CLA is that you retain your copyrights to the contribution, so you can do whatever you want with your contribution, including dual-license it, sell it yourself under a proprietary license, etc. This deeply appeals to the artist in me. The CLA also guarantees that your contribution will continue to be available with the license it was originally granted under. Meaning, even if Canonical takes your contribution proprietary and closed, your original contribution will continue to be available under the original (presumably) FLOSS license. By comparison, the PSF contributor agreements policy is available here: http://www.python.org/psf/contrib/ with embedded links to the actual form. Again, there is no copyright assignment. The choice of initial licenses on the contribution is more limited, meaning if you have a GPL'd contribution, you will have to dual license it under the Academic Free License v2.1 or Apache License v2.0 in order to contribute it to the PSF. The PSF contributor agreement says nothing about patents or moral rights, but it does guarantee that the contribution will be available under a FLOSS license. None of the terms of either contributor agreements seem particularly onerous to me, nor should they (IMHO) be an impediment to participating in such projects. -Barry
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
