Re: [Samba] Proposal to change Samba contribution copyright policy.
Hi Jeremy, Jeremy Allison wrote: ... Given this, I'm proposing that we modify our policy slightly to allow corporate owned copyright within Samba. Note I'm not proposing open season on corporate (C), and we'd still prefer to get individual copyright, or assignment to the Software Freedom Conservancy (as we have done in the past). The reason to prefer individual, or SFC owned copyright is for ease of relicensing components within Samba. Over time, we have moved certain libraries within Samba from GPL to LGPL, for example the tdb and talloc libraries. Re-licensing like this is easier if we don't have to get permission from a corporate legal department, but can just directly ask the engineers themselves, so I'd still suggest that we keep personal or SFC copyright for code that goes into libraries, or code that might be moved into a library. But for things like build fixes for specific platforms, I don't think it's necessary any more to insist on personal copyright, which can delay or prevent engineers from giving us good fixes. Honestly, to my taste, what you are proposing is very vague. It is also not very clear. You say you want to loosen the requirement. But keep the requirement for library code and code that might be moved into libraries sometime in the future (however you want to estimate this). And prefer personal copyright anyways. I get the impression that you also want to base the decision of whether to accept a patch with corporate copyright on the impact that the patch has and the broadness. The example you give is build fixes. This would rather be an innocuous example, compared to a patch adding a new feature or one changing core server behaviour. So what is the procedure you imagine for taking patches with corporate copyright? Do you imagine that we would decide individually whether the coprorate copyright is OK for a given patch based on some vague and personal judgement of the nature of the patch? It sound like that to me. But I think that this is not really practicable. I think we need a clear rule which we can adhere to. It is also not clear to me what the benefit of such a change in policy would be. If you want to basically only accept corporate copyrighted patches when they dont exceed a certain level of impact, then I don't see that this is necessary at all. Maybe I don't understand the meaning of the copyright of a patch. In Samba, to my understanding, a person holds a copyright on a file if she/he has made contributions on that file which exceed a certain size, so that she/he is added to the copyright/license boilerplate comment. (I was not aware that we track indiviual possibly tiny patches as well.) And what you proposed seems to imply that you'd like to not use corporate copyright on changes this big anyways. So maybe you can clarify this, so that I can understand the point. So modulo explanations that can clarify my confusions, I do rather dislike this proposal, the main reason being that the criteria for decision are so vague. But I also don't see the benefit. Has the present policy prevented major contributions in the past? And if so, would we accept major contributions under corporate copyright or just the odd buildfix patch that could also be donated to a team member or the SFC? Cheers - Michael I already raised this with tridge, who told me that he had been meaning to raise the very same issue with me (just one more proof that great minds think alike :-), so I promised to write this email to propose it to the lists in general. Please comment and let us know what you think about this possibility. Samba Team members get to vote, but we'd be really interested in hearing from all Samba users to understand if this is something the community thinks is a good idea or not. Cheers, Jeremy. pgpQ83j6TIQdr.pgp Description: PGP signature -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/options/samba
Re: [Samba] Proposal to change Samba contribution copyright policy.
Andrew Bartlett wrote: On Tue, 2011-07-12 at 14:19 -0700, Jeremy Allison wrote: Hi all, Some history. Samba has historically only accepted code with personal, not corporate copyright attached. There were a couple of good reasons for this in the past, one of which was that we preferred GPL enforcement decisions to be made by individuals, not by corporations. Under GPLv2, a license violator loses all rights under the license and these have to be reinstated by the copyright holders, which made controlling who those copyright holders were very important. People are usually much more reasonable than corporations :-). With the move to GPLv3, this is much less important than it once was. The GPLv3, unlike GPLv2, allows an automatic reinstatement of rights under the license if a violator cures the license violation problem within 30 days. Given this, I'm proposing that we modify our policy slightly to allow corporate owned copyright within Samba. Note I'm not proposing open season on corporate (C), and we'd still prefer to get individual copyright, or assignment to the Software Freedom Conservancy (as we have done in the past). The reason to prefer individual, or SFC owned copyright is for ease of relicensing components within Samba. Over time, we have moved certain libraries within Samba from GPL to LGPL, for example the tdb and talloc libraries. Re-licensing like this is easier if we don't have to get permission from a corporate legal department, but can just directly ask the engineers themselves, so I'd still suggest that we keep personal or SFC copyright for code that goes into libraries, or code that might be moved into a library. But for things like build fixes for specific platforms, I don't think it's necessary any more to insist on personal copyright, which can delay or prevent engineers from giving us good fixes. My main concern is that it will make it harder to explain the line at which we require a company that becomes gradually involved in Samba to jump though the hoops for individual copyright. This is typically a very tedious process, particularly because of the lack of a standard guidance from the Team (because is is typically a modification to employment agreements, and because they are both confidential and different per company). But in exactly the same sense, I personally feel quite bad about scaring a company off making wiki contributions (about how to do smartcards and Samba4) because our policy had no distinction between types of contributions. It would have been really good to have their experiences in the wiki - and I'm sure the same applies to build fixes and other small but important changes. Andrew Bartlett Can we make it easier for an individual contributor to avoid the problem entirely? If I do not wish to claim copyright, I have to realize that to do so I assign copyright to the conservancy, and the wiki asks me to contact a team member if I wish to do so. I'd far rather have it clear how I can contribute without triggering a long discussion with a puzzled IT manager who literally thinks I'm talking about shareware. Having the considerations set out under a heading like Contributing Without Claiming Copyright would be a real benefit to anyone wishing to contribute but concerned about committing his employer to a new and highly unfamiliar legal regime. --dave (now on full time with a former customer) c-b -- David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest dav...@spamcop.net | -- Mark Twain (416) 223-8968 -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/options/samba
Re: [Samba] Proposal to change Samba contribution copyright policy.
After discussing this issue with Adam Au, our VP of engineering our preference is for changes/fixes that require copyrights to assign them to the company, but we are pretty flexible about it and will defer to Samba team's desires. Dave Daugherty Centrify -Original Message- From: samba-technical-boun...@lists.samba.org [mailto:samba-technical- boun...@lists.samba.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Bartlett Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 9:02 PM To: Jeremy Allison On Tue, 2011-07-12 at 14:19 -0700, Jeremy Allison wrote: Hi all, Some history. Samba has historically only accepted code with personal, not corporate copyright attached. There were a couple of good reasons for this in the past, one of which was that we preferred GPL enforcement decisions to be made by individuals, not by corporations. Under GPLv2, a license violator loses all rights under the license and these have to be reinstated by the copyright holders, which made controlling who those copyright holders were very important. People are usually much more reasonable than corporations :-). With the move to GPLv3, this is much less important than it once was. The GPLv3, unlike GPLv2, allows an automatic reinstatement of rights under the license if a violator cures the license violation problem within 30 days. Given this, I'm proposing that we modify our policy slightly to allow corporate owned copyright within Samba. Note I'm not proposing open season on corporate (C), and we'd still prefer to get individual copyright, or assignment to the Software Freedom Conservancy (as we have done in the past). The reason to prefer individual, or SFC owned copyright is for ease of relicensing components within Samba. Over time, we have moved certain libraries within Samba from GPL to LGPL, for example the tdb and talloc libraries. Re-licensing like this is easier if we don't have to get permission from a corporate legal department, but can just directly ask the engineers themselves, so I'd still suggest that we keep personal or SFC copyright for code that goes into libraries, or code that might be moved into a library. But for things like build fixes for specific platforms, I don't think it's necessary any more to insist on personal copyright, which can delay or prevent engineers from giving us good fixes. My main concern is that it will make it harder to explain the line at which we require a company that becomes gradually involved in Samba to jump though the hoops for individual copyright. This is typically a very tedious process, particularly because of the lack of a standard guidance from the Team (because is is typically a modification to employment agreements, and because they are both confidential and different per company). But in exactly the same sense, I personally feel quite bad about scaring a company off making wiki contributions (about how to do smartcards and Samba4) because our policy had no distinction between types of contributions. It would have been really good to have their experiences in the wiki - and I'm sure the same applies to build fixes and other small but important changes. Andrew Bartlett -- Andrew Bartlett http://samba.org/~abartlet/ Authentication Developer, Samba Team http://samba.org -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/options/samba
Re: [Samba] Proposal to change Samba contribution copyright policy.
On Tue, 2011-07-12 at 14:19 -0700, Jeremy Allison wrote: Hi all, Some history. Samba has historically only accepted code with personal, not corporate copyright attached. There were a couple of good reasons for this in the past, one of which was that we preferred GPL enforcement decisions to be made by individuals, not by corporations. Under GPLv2, a license violator loses all rights under the license and these have to be reinstated by the copyright holders, which made controlling who those copyright holders were very important. People are usually much more reasonable than corporations :-). With the move to GPLv3, this is much less important than it once was. The GPLv3, unlike GPLv2, allows an automatic reinstatement of rights under the license if a violator cures the license violation problem within 30 days. Given this, I'm proposing that we modify our policy slightly to allow corporate owned copyright within Samba. Note I'm not proposing open season on corporate (C), and we'd still prefer to get individual copyright, or assignment to the Software Freedom Conservancy (as we have done in the past). The reason to prefer individual, or SFC owned copyright is for ease of relicensing components within Samba. Over time, we have moved certain libraries within Samba from GPL to LGPL, for example the tdb and talloc libraries. Re-licensing like this is easier if we don't have to get permission from a corporate legal department, but can just directly ask the engineers themselves, so I'd still suggest that we keep personal or SFC copyright for code that goes into libraries, or code that might be moved into a library. But for things like build fixes for specific platforms, I don't think it's necessary any more to insist on personal copyright, which can delay or prevent engineers from giving us good fixes. I already raised this with tridge, who told me that he had been meaning to raise the very same issue with me (just one more proof that great minds think alike :-), so I promised to write this email to propose it to the lists in general. Please comment and let us know what you think about this possibility. Samba Team members get to vote, but we'd be really interested in hearing from all Samba users to understand if this is something the community thinks is a good idea or not. Jeremy I have no objections in principle, but for copyrights that cover feature changes if companies want to retain copyright I think we should request that they defer any decision on licensing (need to find appropriate legal wording) to the team so that we are not constrained by disappeared, sold or otherwise unresponsive or recalcitrant companies in case we need to change the license of one of the components. What do corporate contributors think ? Is that something your legal department can swallow, do you need the team to give promises about the kind of licenses we will consider in case changes are needed. I think we have ever used GPLvX, LGPLvX, and public domain/extremely permissive X11 style license. And I think we can restrict ourselves to that set or equivalent. Simo. -- Simo Sorce Samba Team GPL Compliance Officer s...@samba.org Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat, Inc. s...@redhat.com -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/options/samba
Re: [Samba] Proposal to change Samba contribution copyright policy.
Hi, On Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:19:51 -0700 Jeremy Allison j...@samba.org wrote: Given this, I'm proposing that we modify our policy slightly to allow corporate owned copyright within Samba. Note I'm not proposing open season on corporate (C), and we'd still prefer to get individual copyright, or assignment to the Software Freedom Conservancy (as we have done in the past). Would these proposed policy changes also apply to ctdb, or just Samba? The reason I ask is that I'm currently working on a PMDA for ctdb[1] which is based off some GPLv2+ code with corporate (Silicon Graphics) copyright assignment. It may be better suited to live outside the ctdb tree anyway, but thought I'd check. Cheers, David [1] Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) Performance Metrics Domain Agent for ctdb git://oss.sgi.com/ddiss/ctdb ctdb-1.0.114.2-pmda -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/options/samba
[Samba] Proposal to change Samba contribution copyright policy.
Hi all, Some history. Samba has historically only accepted code with personal, not corporate copyright attached. There were a couple of good reasons for this in the past, one of which was that we preferred GPL enforcement decisions to be made by individuals, not by corporations. Under GPLv2, a license violator loses all rights under the license and these have to be reinstated by the copyright holders, which made controlling who those copyright holders were very important. People are usually much more reasonable than corporations :-). With the move to GPLv3, this is much less important than it once was. The GPLv3, unlike GPLv2, allows an automatic reinstatement of rights under the license if a violator cures the license violation problem within 30 days. Given this, I'm proposing that we modify our policy slightly to allow corporate owned copyright within Samba. Note I'm not proposing open season on corporate (C), and we'd still prefer to get individual copyright, or assignment to the Software Freedom Conservancy (as we have done in the past). The reason to prefer individual, or SFC owned copyright is for ease of relicensing components within Samba. Over time, we have moved certain libraries within Samba from GPL to LGPL, for example the tdb and talloc libraries. Re-licensing like this is easier if we don't have to get permission from a corporate legal department, but can just directly ask the engineers themselves, so I'd still suggest that we keep personal or SFC copyright for code that goes into libraries, or code that might be moved into a library. But for things like build fixes for specific platforms, I don't think it's necessary any more to insist on personal copyright, which can delay or prevent engineers from giving us good fixes. I already raised this with tridge, who told me that he had been meaning to raise the very same issue with me (just one more proof that great minds think alike :-), so I promised to write this email to propose it to the lists in general. Please comment and let us know what you think about this possibility. Samba Team members get to vote, but we'd be really interested in hearing from all Samba users to understand if this is something the community thinks is a good idea or not. Cheers, Jeremy. -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/options/samba
Re: [Samba] Proposal to change Samba contribution copyright policy.
I have no issue with corporate contributions. They have been helpful for several projects, including the Linux Kernel. Though your concerns are valid the GPL V3 is well worded to cover them efficiently. The main thing is to make sure that said contributors and their legal departments understand the license and how it works. -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/options/samba
Re: [Samba] Proposal to change Samba contribution copyright policy.
On Tue, 2011-07-12 at 14:19 -0700, Jeremy Allison wrote: Hi all, Some history. Samba has historically only accepted code with personal, not corporate copyright attached. There were a couple of good reasons for this in the past, one of which was that we preferred GPL enforcement decisions to be made by individuals, not by corporations. Under GPLv2, a license violator loses all rights under the license and these have to be reinstated by the copyright holders, which made controlling who those copyright holders were very important. People are usually much more reasonable than corporations :-). With the move to GPLv3, this is much less important than it once was. The GPLv3, unlike GPLv2, allows an automatic reinstatement of rights under the license if a violator cures the license violation problem within 30 days. Given this, I'm proposing that we modify our policy slightly to allow corporate owned copyright within Samba. Note I'm not proposing open season on corporate (C), and we'd still prefer to get individual copyright, or assignment to the Software Freedom Conservancy (as we have done in the past). The reason to prefer individual, or SFC owned copyright is for ease of relicensing components within Samba. Over time, we have moved certain libraries within Samba from GPL to LGPL, for example the tdb and talloc libraries. Re-licensing like this is easier if we don't have to get permission from a corporate legal department, but can just directly ask the engineers themselves, so I'd still suggest that we keep personal or SFC copyright for code that goes into libraries, or code that might be moved into a library. But for things like build fixes for specific platforms, I don't think it's necessary any more to insist on personal copyright, which can delay or prevent engineers from giving us good fixes. My main concern is that it will make it harder to explain the line at which we require a company that becomes gradually involved in Samba to jump though the hoops for individual copyright. This is typically a very tedious process, particularly because of the lack of a standard guidance from the Team (because is is typically a modification to employment agreements, and because they are both confidential and different per company). But in exactly the same sense, I personally feel quite bad about scaring a company off making wiki contributions (about how to do smartcards and Samba4) because our policy had no distinction between types of contributions. It would have been really good to have their experiences in the wiki - and I'm sure the same applies to build fixes and other small but important changes. Andrew Bartlett -- Andrew Bartletthttp://samba.org/~abartlet/ Authentication Developer, Samba Team http://samba.org -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/options/samba
