Re: The Evolution Copyright Assignment Form (Was: pdf

[Rob Adams <readams readams net>]

The only (minor) issues I have with the agreement are as follows:
1) It applies to all past, or future works, regardless of whether those
works are submitted to Ximian/Novell.  Theoretically, internal corporate
changes are owned by Novell or patches an individual might make but
never distribute.  Also, if a developer signs this agreement, then does
internal work on Evolution in a work-for-hire arrangement (where the
employer owns the copyright), how does this conflict resolve itself?
This wouldn't be a problem if the copyright assignment applied only to
works submitted to Novell for inclusion in the evolution tree.

2) Something seems vaguely fishy about paragraph 4.  "[Novell] agrees to
distribute...under a license that complies with the [DFSG]".  Does this
mean that Novell must continue to actively distribute the Works or
merely that when it does distribute it, it will be available under a
DFSG-license?

3) In paragraph 5, in effect the developer agrees to license
patents/whatever in royalty-free, RAND.  I'm fairly sure that an
agreement to license it is different from a license to use it.  There
should I think be some language like "agrees to license, and hereby does
license" or something like that.  IANAL.

-Rob

On Mon, 2004-06-07 at 12:05 -0400, Aaron Weber wrote:
> Havoc, Rob, et al:
>   You can find the Evolution copyright assignment form and other
> information about it here:
> http://developer.ximian.com/projects/evolution/copyright.html
> http://developer.ximian.com/projects/evolution/copyright_form.pdf
> 
> We'll be moving it to forge.novell.com some time very soon, and changing
> "Ximian" to "Novell," but it's basically the same for Ximian as for
> Novell.
> 
> In summary, (note I'm not a lawyer or an approved copyright voice from
> Novell, etc.) it's "you let us use it as though we thought it up, you
> still get to use it since you did think it up, and we promise to always
> license it under the GPL or another approved license, even if we also
> make some sort of proprietary extension like Connector."
> 
> a.
> 
> On Fri, 2004-06-04 at 15:11 -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > On Thu, 2004-06-03 at 17:18, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > > <quote who="Havoc Pennington">
> > > 
> > > > What I'd worry about more is the asymmetric assignment situation for say
> > > > OO.org (and I think but I'm not sure for Evolution), where one company has
> > > > the exclusive right to create proprietary versions or link in proprietary
> > > > code. Basically we're talking about a GPL loophole.
> > > 
> > > > I do support including Evolution in 2.8, however to the extent I'd worry
> > > > about copyright assignment this is the issue I would raise.
> > > 
> > > Is that really a huge problem for the community in general, with Evolution?
> > > 
> > 
> > Only the community can answer that, I don't know. I'm not even sure what
> > the Evo copyright assignment says (though I think Red Hat has signed
> > it).
> > 
> > It really comes down to people's personal feelings about free software
> > and how they want their code to be used.
> > 
> > Havoc
> > 
> > 
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