I think the difference between "crystal clean" and "NASCAR approach" is a matter of perspective, because, as you said, some people are interested in being able to relicense their work, and, for that matter, the work of others as well. From David's perspective I believe "crystal clean" means a single legal entity (and one that has trusts, at that) has the undisputed power to relicense the code base.
There is no question that many of David's principles are the anathema of ASF's principles. That has been clear for a shockingly long time. But my understanding is that legally there is no dispute. If the community is going to put ASF principles aside in order to keep the code, then it should just do it. Weaving principles into the discussion just introduces ambiguity, prevents closure, and ultimately hampers the a developing community's growth. This, I believe is what the leaders of the ESME community just voted to do. Or the community can bite the bullet, stand by ASF principles even though it appears to be legally unnecessary, and yank David's code. On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 9:19 PM, Joe Schaefer <[email protected]>wrote: > ----- Original Message ---- > > > From: Erik Engbrecht <[email protected]> > > To: [email protected] > > Sent: Tue, January 12, 2010 8:22:17 PM > > Subject: Re: [VOTE] Dealing with copyright issue (See ESME-47) > > > > I don't know if this will add anything to the conversation, but... > > > > I think David's concern is that, if wishes, he is able to reconstruct a > > version of ESME where WorldWide Conferencing, LLC holds copyright to the > > entirety, and he doesn't want there to be anything out there that some > piece > > of that reconstruction no longer belongs to WorldWide Conferencing, LLC > > because it was transferred to ASF. He's very, very stringent about > keeping > > the IP in his projects crystal clean and owned by his holding company. > This > > is about what rights David has, not what rights ASF has, beyond David > > feeling ASF does not have the right to do anything that might cast doubt > on > > his ownership of his contributions. > > Reading the recent archives of this mailing list doesn't leave me with that > impression. I get the sense David's idea of how to treat IP is the NASCAR > approach, where everyone adds their own copyright statement to whatever > source > files they happen to touch. That is common in the FSF world, where people > are > quite interested in relicensing their individual work to third parties. It > is > anathema here, because we tend to view a project's codebase as the > community's > intellectual commons. > > > > -- http://erikengbrecht.blogspot.com/
