Re: The copyright assignment debate.

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com>]

Hello,

> I'd like to see three specific questions answered
> 
> 1.	Will Novell extend the patent bomb aspect of the license so that if
> there isn't a free version then there isn't a proprietary version.
> Without this it is possible for a ficticious future evil Novell to
> hijack the contributions and kill the free version. The contract needs
> to say something like
> 
> 	"If through frustration of contract or any other cause
> 	 Novell is unable to continue to make available the GPL
> 	 version of the code the right to continue to make copies
> 	 of the code under other licensing arrangements also ceases."

This is something that we can bring up with the Novell lawyers.

> 2.	Will Novell add "in perpetuity" to the arrangement and also specific
> "GPL and possibly other OSI licenses", since currently they could take
> an Evolution contribution, relicense it back 4 clause BSD so its not GPL
> compatible. While silly in itself the point of contract is to deal with
> the "what happens if there is a later falling out"

This is not needed, section 1(b) states that the developer gets
immediately a grant-back on his code to do whatever it pleases with it.

The code is released immediately under the GPL and you get it back from
Ximian for reuse under those terms.

> 3.	What will the foundation do if someone wishes to contribute something
> to Evolution but declines to contribute it to Novell under the terms
> they offer, and Evolution is part of the gnome desktop.

This is a maintainer issue.

What happens if Daniel does not want to take a patch to libxml because
the patch is under a different license? 

What if the code is broken, in progress, incomplete?

At this point, if someone feels strongly about this, they should fork
and maintain their copy, or release something like the linux kernel
people do the evolution-AC or whatever.

Miguel