The only alternative to the paperwork-intensive approach described above is to explicitly list the conditions for submitting code in every file. This way, no contributor can claim to not have known or agreed to the conditions, because they themselves are either uploading the conditions (in the case of "svn add") or leaving the conditions intact within an existing file that they've modified (in the case of "svn commit"). So I think the policy that Timothy has outlined at http://wiki.duskglow.com/tiki-index.php?page=Subversion+Commit+Policy is appropriate.
If it's ok to forgo obtaining a physical signature from contributors in this scenario, then surely it's sufficient to instead have them explicitly sign-off and acknowledge agreement when they make code contributions, which they will be sending on the list at least once before they get commit access.
I think the legal peace-of-mind that comes with listing all contributors within the copyright notice of every file they've modified far outweighs any psychological drawbacks. Many problems can arise if the copyright owner is not listed in the file – it leaves the file's licensing status in limbo. For example, imagine a source code file that says "See the file COPYING for more information." instead of a proper copyright and licensing statement. It's possible for someone to move this source code file into another project that has a different COPYING file and thus subvert the original intent of the author. This isn't just hypothetical – it has happened in real life to GPL-licensed projects such as Konsole (http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/09/29/164207).
There would be a copyright notice in there, but it would say something like (C) 2004-2007 Traversal Technology, instead of an individual name. There also would be a license header - I'm not arguing against including the license header, I'm merely against including the contributor agreement clauses in the source code, since they're not applicable to users of the source code. As far as the problems with Konsole's source, that can be helped by including a URL in the header that points to the current license. No matter what you put in the file, there's always the possibility that a developer will violate your license. Probably, they'll either be clueless about licensing in general (and so won't bother to think about the license terms), or they'll be fully aware of your license, but will violate it anyway.
Is anyone making backups of the SVN log? How about sending all the changes to a commits mailing list?
http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics-commit If nobody objects, I can change the Mailing Lists link to point to http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/ _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
