Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement
| From: | Tom Callaway <tcallawa-AT-redhat.com> | |
| To: | users-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org, announce-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org, devel-announce-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org, ambassadors-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org, Fedora community advisory board <advisory-board-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org>, Fedora Design Team <design-team-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org>, desktop-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org, epel-announce-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org, Fedora Games <games-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org>, i18n-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org, Fedora Infrastructure <infrastructure-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org>, kernel-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org, logistics-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org, marketing-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org, rel-eng-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org, spins-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org, Fedora Translation Project List <trans-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org>, kde-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org | |
| Subject: | IMPORTANT - Fedora Project Contributor Agreement Signing Window Is Open | |
| Date: | Tue, 17 May 2011 16:05:56 -0400 | |
| Message-ID: | <4DD2D524.7070209@redhat.com> | |
| Cc: | lwn-AT-lwn.net | |
| Archive‑link: | Article |
Please take a moment and read this brief email, as it is important. Fedora is in the process of retiring our old "Individual Contributor License Agreement" (also known as the ICLA or CLA) and replacing it with the new Fedora Project Contributor Agreement (FPCA). All Fedora contributors with accounts in the Fedora Account System (https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts) who have agreed to the old CLA *MUST* agree to the new FPCA by June 17, 2011 to continue contributing to Fedora. Here is how you do this: 1) Login to the Fedora Account System: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts 2) Once logged in, click on the "My Account" link in the blue box on the left side of the window. 3) On the page that loads, you will see a section labeled "Account Details". Look for the line that says "Contributor Agreement". On that line, you should see a new section that says: "New CLA Not Signed - We need contributors to sign the new Contributor Agreement(Complete it now!)" Click on "Complete it now!" and follow the prompts. ***** It is important that Fedora Account holders who have signed the old Fedora CLA sign the new FPCA. We have allotted a window of one month for Fedora contributors to agree to the FPCA. This means that after June 17, 2011, any Fedora Contributors who have not agreed to the FPCA will have their "cla_done" flag set to False. This also means that any groups that they are in which are dependent upon "cla_done", such as "packager", "ambassador", and Fedora People access will be removed. There are a few accounts which are exempt from this, specifically, accounts which are members of the "cla_dell", "cla_intel", and "cla_redhat" groups. If you do not know what these groups are, you are probably not in them. :) Accounts in these groups will not see the "New CLA Not Signed" line on their "My Account" page, and do not need to take any action at this time. Please take a minute and login to FAS to agree to the terms of the FPCA, to avoid loss of access. More information about the FPCA, including the final FPCA text, can be found here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Fedora_Project_Contr... If you have any additional questions about the FPCA or the re-signing process, please feel free to email me directly at legal@fedoraproject.org. Thanks, Tom Callaway, Fedora Legal == Fedora Project -- announce mailing list announce@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/announce
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Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement
Posted May 18, 2011 17:12 UTC (Wed) by jg (guest, #17537) [Link]
Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement
Posted May 18, 2011 23:15 UTC (Wed) by jg (guest, #17537) [Link]
Contributor agreement proliferation can become as much a problem as license proliferation and is another barrier to entry to contribution to a project.
Be that as it may, I'm pleased Fedora has at least cleaned up the problems I saw (though belatedly).
Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement
Posted May 18, 2011 23:31 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Do you like the new Fedora approach enough to encourage other entities to pick it up and reuse it?
Does one of the possible mix-and-match clauses of the Harmony draft language approach adequately cover the Fedora approach? If so which specific set of Harmony options do you think is equivalent?
-jef
Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement
Posted May 18, 2011 23:53 UTC (Wed) by jg (guest, #17537) [Link]
For God's sake, let's not have contributor agreement proliferation to go with license proliferation.
Note that in the history of the old X Consortium, we had a different solution that required no acceptance of an explicit set of terms and conditions of an agreement such as these or other contributor agreements; significant contributions were accompanied by a letter that asserted that the person providing the contribution was authorized/able to do so and that the person doing the submission understood that the software was indeed going to be distributed under the terms of their license or that of other copyright licenses present in their code.
Similar letters accompanied contributions to the Berkeley Software Distribution: I have, for example, in my possession a copy of the letter that accompanied the original X distribution that went onto 4.3BSD.
These letters were one hell of a lot shorter and easier to understand, and I think provides the same kind of thing RH and other corporations care about: that contributions come from people able to make the contribution in the first place, and not some rogue employee unauthorized to do so.
Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement
Posted May 19, 2011 14:57 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Note that in the history of the old X Consortium, we had a different solution that required no acceptance of an explicit set of terms and conditions of an agreement such as these or other contributor agreements; significant contributions were accompanied by a letter that asserted that the person providing the contribution was authorized/able to do so and that the person doing the submission understood that the software was indeed going to be distributed under the terms of their license or that of other copyright licenses present in their code.
I think this is more or less the case for organisations like the Python Software Foundation: there's something you sign which says that "this is my work and I am allowed to release it" and that you are offering it under a selection of licences. One has to wonder why this kind of thing isn't good enough for other organisations.
I think there's a vested interest for some people to claim that such declarations somehow aren't good enough, leading down the slippery slope (seen elsewhere recently) that ends with a sentiment like, "To be on the safe side and to safeguard the future of the project, we should really own all the code." The worrying thing is that newcomers and people not versed in licensing issues think that this is the way things should be, or are normally, done.
Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement
Posted May 19, 2011 1:49 UTC (Thu) by rfontana (subscriber, #52677) [Link]
> language approach adequately cover the Fedora approach? If so which
> specific set of Harmony options do you think is equivalent?
I'll answer that (as principal drafter of the Fedora agreement, and occasional observer of Canonical's Harmony group from the sidelines): None. The unique feature of the Fedora agreement is that it formalizes the right to opt out of the default license (MIT license for code, CC-BY-SA with GPL compatibility for content). The default license is granted by the contributor.
The draft Harmony agreements are, to my knowledge, in all their existing permutations, structured quite differently: Give up your entire copyright interest to one inbound entity (or grant a maximally broad copyright license to one inbound entity). In some permutations, but not others, certain conditions are placed on the inbound entity. Downstream licenses (if any) are granted by the inbound entity. There is no formalized opt-out right, unlike the Fedora agreement.
In the Fedora agreement, there is no named inbound entity - the contributor is understood to be granting the license himself/herself/itself, to (potentially) the entire world (anyone who might possibly participate in and receive material produced by the Fedora Project). Where the default license applies, it is a well-known, standard license. Those who want to opt out of the default licensing system and (say) GPL their contributions are encouraged to do so.
If experimentation with those two very different approaches is "proliferation", I welcome it.
Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement
Posted May 18, 2011 23:32 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement
Posted May 19, 2011 7:53 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement
Posted May 19, 2011 11:35 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
The FAQ is right in the sense that Fedora Project defines contributors as those with a Fedora account system and in one of the project groups but if you submit a patch via bugzilla, you are in no way bound by any other agreement other than the license under which you submit the patch and that's fine by Fedora because it doesn't require any kind of copyright assignment but merely clarity of licensing and any free software license fits the acceptance criteria. The only real point of the contributor agreement is to have a default license (MIT for code, CC-BY-SA for content) if a Fedora contributor submits something without a license.
Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement
Posted May 18, 2011 17:40 UTC (Wed) by rfontana (subscriber, #52677) [Link]
http://opensource.com/law/10/6/new-contributor-agreement-...