Re: Ask contributors a permission to relicense
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 15/01/12 20:07, Francesco Poli wrote: Please note that Andrei found it “a bit harsh” [1] (well, it was about copyright reassignment, since we will only ask for a relicensing permission, maybe his remark won't stand) if we remove commit access to people who won't give their agreement. Hopefully, none of us will really disagree, and we'll only temporarily remove commit access to temporarily unavailable contributors. As it should already be clear from my previous comments, I think that requiring blanket re-licensing permission from contributors as a prerequisite for accepting contributions to an activity of the Debian Project would be a *very bad* precedent. I think that such a strategy, if adopted, would alienate a number of existing or future potential contributors. I know I'm probably saying the same as Hugo in a different way, but what about assigning the copyright, and accepting as payment an agreement that the work will only be relicenced within certain guidelines, eg saying that it must meet the 2012 DFSG for example. Should the project then use the copyright to unacceptably relicence the work, they are in breach of contract, the copyright transfer can be voided, and the relicence becomes a copyright violation. That's the way the FSF do their copyright assigns, auiu. Cheers, Wol -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJPLn0kAAoJENxtD9pn8rRukHYH/jEYDnsNrHBiIhZpvNmUnQeA imP0djRywQemE1axt9zsi3PuiuwFsEVKI9dZmwdY/dXSA4teLH0ryd0yRhBI6Nf3 y489RPCkThgU1wP5l8NOn3ieE0R3t1Gd6WDqAg/YD+XQ+XggPLM4EgzQ8MG50zDC GQD8u8oCuNwCJVxP89fISBP9T4lITYVNbVpLVTrF6yn6cAakcy/cUUgW4ZQWmjnn KR4cvaMmj4Jbdnn3O1KC+WuPaCTCDKN+CUOC16n4LcPZwLRJoUmNIQy2+F9OvM9X BQwN41j7KzcPvp6D4flZsTNV6PRQDoPZOMd0K66YQTMVI7LoguuNXAyzulDq81M= =G6XW -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4f2e7d34.3060...@youngman.org.uk
Re: Ask contributors a permission to relicense
On Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:59:32 + Wols Lists wrote: [...] On 15/01/12 20:07, Francesco Poli wrote: [...] As it should already be clear from my previous comments, I think that requiring blanket re-licensing permission from contributors as a prerequisite for accepting contributions to an activity of the Debian Project would be a *very bad* precedent. I think that such a strategy, if adopted, would alienate a number of existing or future potential contributors. I know I'm probably saying the same as Hugo in a different way, but what about assigning the copyright, This has been criticized even more by a number of people (including me). Anyway, a different (and saner) strategy has already been adopted, luckily: http://bugs.debian.org/388141#311 and accepting as payment an agreement that the work will only be relicenced within certain guidelines, eg saying that it must meet the 2012 DFSG for example. Should the project then use the copyright to unacceptably relicence the work, they are in breach of contract, the copyright transfer can be voided, and the relicence becomes a copyright violation. I don't think that this would work correctly. Unfortunately, it is not unusual that different people disagree on what meets the DFSG and what fails to meet them. Even among people with a good experience in analyzing licenses. Hence, the problem is: who is going to evaluate whether a given future re-licensing is compliant with the DFSG? SPI? The Debian Project? The FTP-masters? They are basically the ones who decide the re-licensing: they will always state (most probably in good faith!) that the decision complies with the agreement. The contributor who signed the copyright transfer agreement? This would open the possibility for a number of future complaints that could be hard to handle... That's the way the FSF do their copyright assigns, auiu. Actually, I strongly dislike this behavior of the FSF... -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! . Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE pgpxOTPvvR2Cx.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Ask contributors a permission to relicense
Hello, I haven't followed thoroughly the thread, but there are many legal issues at stake with such decisions, for instance in some countries such as France, it is legally not possible to grant this kind of permission for future works; thus this agreement below would be legally void: Le dimanche 15 janvier 2012 à 14:45 -0400, David Prévot a écrit : ——— Subject: Permission to relicense my work on the Debian website I hereby give permission to relicense my work — which consist of edition or translation of portions of text from one human language to another human language, that I have provided to the Debian website or that I will provide in the future — to any DFSG compatible license as chosen by the web team, and announced by the Debian project leader. ——— Moreover, in practice, I hardly see what's the difference with a well-drafted copyright assignment. Maybe you'd be interested in reading what FSFE has drafted for free software projects: http://fsfe.org/projects/ftf/fla.en.html The Fiduciary Licence Agreement (FLA) is a copyright assignment that allows one entity to safeguard all of the code created for a project by consolidating copyright (or exclusive exploitation rights) to counteract copyright fragmentation. This enables projects to protect their legal maintainability by preserving the ability to relicense code and ensuring sufficient rights to enforce licences in court. The person assigning does not lose their rights to the code either, as the FLA gives back unlimited usage/single exploitation rights to the author. The FLA also applies a set of principles for the fiduciary. If they breach these principles, all grants and licenses made to them automatically expire. Benefeciaries of the FLA assign the copyright in their work, and in countries where assignments of the copyright in a work are impossible, they grant the fiduciary an exclusive license (see §1(1) for details). Therefore, the FLA is designed to work in both civil and common law countries. Best regards, Hugo -- Hugo Roy im: h...@jabber.fsfe.org French Coordinator mobile: +33.6 0874 1341 The Free Software Foundation Europe works to create general understanding and support for software freedom in politics, law, business and society. Become a Fellow http://www.fsfe.org/join La Free Software Foundation Europe œuvre à la compréhension et au soutien de la liberté logicielle en politique, en droit, en économie et en société. Rejoignez la Fellowship http://www.fsfe.org/join -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1326890752.3382.46.ca...@synclavier.lan
Re: Ask contributors a permission to relicense
On Sun, 15 Jan 2012 14:45:20 -0400 David Prévot wrote: Le 09/01/2012 17:39, Francesco Poli a écrit : [...] Instead of continuing our discussion based on impressions, we just issued a quick poll [P.-S.]: it confirms that not everyone will agree with a copyright reassignment, but almost all contributors will likely give us a blanket permission to relicense their contributions under any DFSG-free license. [...] Please note that Andrei found it “a bit harsh” [1] (well, it was about copyright reassignment, since we will only ask for a relicensing permission, maybe his remark won't stand) if we remove commit access to people who won't give their agreement. Hopefully, none of us will really disagree, and we'll only temporarily remove commit access to temporarily unavailable contributors. As it should already be clear from my previous comments, I think that requiring blanket re-licensing permission from contributors as a prerequisite for accepting contributions to an activity of the Debian Project would be a *very bad* precedent. I think that such a strategy, if adopted, would alienate a number of existing or future potential contributors. At the very least, me. I haven't yet contributed anything to the Debian official web site, but I think that anyone trying to persuade me to help will have a very hard time, if, in order to contribute, I would be forced to allow the Debian Project to re-license my work at will, under any terms it considers to be DFSG-free. -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! . Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE pgpyArFAw0ayE.pgp Description: PGP signature
