Evolution copyright assignment: Storm in a teacup

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

So,

There are two major points to this discussion, and I'd like to tentatively
put my foot down on at least one of them (but probably both), because there
is a lot of really off-the-planet discussion going on here.

Evolution Specific
==================

The first issue is whether we accept copyright assignment for Evolution (in
particular) as an officially blessed member of the Desktop release. So far,
the major concern here is that Novell (and previously, Ximian) reserves the
right to make the software available under other (non-Free) licensing terms.
Quoting from the copyright assignment agreement:

  5. Novell will make the Assigned Contributions available under an
  agreement approved by the OSI (Open Source Initiative), and may also make
  the Assigned Contributions available under other license terms.

That means that external contributions WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE UNDER A FREE
LICENSE. It doesn't say "in perpetuity", which is interesting, and I'd have
to ask a lawyer what that implies.

If any individual has a moral objection to giving Novell the right to make
the software available under non-Free licenses then that person is FREE TO
NOT SIGN THE AGREEMENT. End of story. At no time will contributions be
unavailable under a Free license, Novell has specifically called that out in
their agreement. This is not complicated at all.

So, from GNOME's perspective, I do not believe there is any significant
issue with this form of copyright assignment agreement. We, as a project and
community, get what we want, and it is up to the individual (or contributing
company) to figure out if they're happy to sign the agreement if they want
their changes in the main distribution of Evolution code.

The General Case
================

The second issue raised is that of 'the general case' - what happens if we
accept modules requiring copyright assignment all the time? Will that make
contribution to GNOME harder, raise the bar, etc? This one is very, very
easy to answer:

  Accepting Evolution WILL NOT BE A PRECEDENT for accepting modules
  requiring copyright assignment in general.

We don't have to commit to the general case if we commit to this specific
case (Evolution) now. I'm happy for anyone to point to this email in the
future if someone insists we should accept other modules requiring copyright
assignment because we accepted Evolution. We should explicitely rule that
out.


I would like to propose these resolutions to the Foundation Board for
discussion at the next Board meeting (which will be next week).

- Jeff

-- 
linux.conf.au 2005: Canberra, Australia                http://linux.conf.au/
 
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