2009/12/5 Behdad Esfahbod <beh...@behdad.org>: > On 12/05/2009 03:32 PM, Ross Gardler wrote: > >>> In GNOME we don't require any. Contributors keep their rights. >> >> Can we please kill this meme. >> >> CLAs are not about assignment of copyright form one party to another. > > Let me correct you: they are not *necessarily* about copyright assignment. > In real world however, more often than not, they are.
Your addition of the world "necessarily" is correct. But I do not agree with your assertion: ASF, Mozilla, FSF, Eclipse, Plone, Python, Subversion, Debian, Ubuntu and Linux (for example) do not require copyright assignment. MySQL does. Oh wait, that's a perception issue on my part as I generally navigate to those that do not require assignment. I don't know that I can state the case factually one way or the other, but can you? ... >> We really should not be making glib statements and sending messages to >> students that do not communicate this professional advice. > > It's SFLC's advice, and I respect that. But it's not g-d's word. Different > projects have different views on this. Here we do agree, but you seem to have missed my point. My request was not for you to avoid stating your view. My request was kill the meme that CLAs are exclusively about copyright assignment. That's why I followed the first SFLC quote with "(note this does not necessarily mean copyright assignment)" It's useful to know that the GNOME foundation does not use CLAs for students (the response to the topic). It's interesting to know that you say they are not used for any contributions, but that's not the topic here. What I'm concerned about is the justification for this position. To state that they are not needed because the GNOME foundation does not own copyright is not helpful. The two things are not directly connected since CLAs in a great many organisations tht have them, have nothing to do with copyright assigment and everything to do with unifying protection in the way the SFLC document explains.. There are very good reasons why most other foundations (that I am familiar with) require CLAs (that are not copyright assignments) for committers. Most don't require them for non-committers, some require them for major contributions from non-committers. The differences between these cases have less to do with whether copyright is assigned or not and more to do with a risk assessment. If one does not understand the risks then one cannot assess them. But those risks are off topic for this thread so I'll let it drop and end by quoting you on a point we agree on: > Different > projects have different views on this. Ross _______________________________________________ tos mailing list tos@teachingopensource.org http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
