On 22-05-13 13:06, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 10:13:23AM +0100, Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote: >> Some produce more open source software than others, and all of these >> will be ranked differently by each person differently, am I still yet >> to be screwed by Canonical's projects. Please correct me if I am >> wrong, but none of Canonical CA covered projects yet to […] > > When looking at copyright assignments to companies, the above is hardly > the point, in my opinion.
No, that is *exactly* the point: yes, companies may have different objectives, but that doesn't mean they have to use different ways to get to those objectives. A contract is binding, whether one party to the contract is a nonprofit, a company, or a private person; if you receive promises (in writing) that they won't do a particular thing, and they then go ahead and do it anyway, you have perfect grounds to sue them for breach of contract. > The "problem" (quotes because it's just the > way things are) with companies is that they can be sold and bought, and > the new management can have entirely different objectives, and > strategies to reach it, than the former management you trusted. If you trusted the former management and didn't sign any contract with them, then that's your own fault, and you got entirely what you deserved. In contrast, if you signed a well-specified contract with the former management that specified explicitly what they could and could not do, and then the new management heads off and does it anyway, you still have the right to sue them. After all, you signed a contract with the company, not with the company's management. > We have > seen plenty of bad examples of this happening to "open source" companies > in recent years, I'm surprised we haven't learned the lesson yet. The lesson, presumably, is "don't trust (non-written) words, trust contracts". > Your > "historical record" arguments here say vary little about what could > happen in the future to CAA/CLAs you make to for-profit companies; the > only guarantees you have are the terms of the agreements. That much, of course, is true. [...] > Also, the > mere fact that you remove profit from the equation reduces quite a bit > the overall pressure in changing objectives and strategies. For big multinational companies, perhaps. But not for smaller companies. -- This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space. If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today. -- http://xkcd.com/1133/
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