> And how are potential contributors supposed to know this? They're really not. The fundamental problem here is that this area of the law is not only very complicated, but is really all guesswork since there are few, if any, relevant cases. Moreover, this is an area of the law where details matter, often quite a bit.
My suggestion for this process is develop an online form where a person specifies various things about their contribution including what program it's for an how long it is. It should ask whether the person anticipates submitting more changes. Then it needs to ask what the person's employment status is and in which country. It should ask about terms relating to IPR in any employment agreements. And so on. Then it should be able to come up with a set of choices that would cover this person's unique situation. That is more or less what a potentional contributor gets via email when submitting a patch. I don't see how a web form would make things different.
