Re: Evolution copyright assignment: Storm in a teacup

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

      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.

Actually, it doesn't say that.  The OSI has criteria for "open source"
licenses, which are different from the criteria for free software.
Some of the licenses approved by the OSI are not free software
licenses.  At present, Novell uses the GNU GPL, which is a free
software licenses, and I think it will continue to do so.  But these
words don't make a commitment to use a license that qualifies
as free software.

I think it would be good to ask Novell to change that commitment so
that it commits to use a free software license.  While this decision
is not directly in the hands of the GNOME Foundation, it concerns the
GNOME Foundation greatly, since application of a non-free license to
something we expect to use as a part of GNOME would cause grave
problems.

See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html for the criteria for
free software, and http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html for a
list of many licenses that do or do not qualify.

As you mentioned, this doesn't say "in perpetuity".  But even if it
did, that might not be enough to close the loophole.  Novell could
release one subsequent version under an OSI-approved
not-necessarily-quite-free-software license, and keep that version
available forever, while doing all subsequent development in proprietary
versions only.  As far as I can see, this would not violate that
contractual provision.

I am not saying that Novell intends to do that.  So far Novell has
been rather cooperative with free software, more than it had to be,
and maybe it will continue being so.  But the contract wording would
permit that.

To eliminate this possibility, one could try wording such as to say
that all future modified versions of your code that are released shall
be released under a free software license.  This would require that
the future fixes and enhancements they make to your code be available
as free software.

The clause 4 cited from the Ximian version of this license
has similar wording:

    4. Ximian agrees to distribute the Works or a Program
    enhanced by the Works under a license that complies
    with the Debian Free Software Guidelines; the GNU
    General Public License is an example of such a license.
    Ximian may at its sole discretion also offer the Works
    or a Program enhanced by the Works under other
    license terms.

This might avoid the possibility of using a non-free license, if it
means the DFSG as interpreted by Debian.  It so happens that Debian's
interpretation is very strict.  If, however, it means the DFSG as
interpreted by Ximian, we cannot be sure what licenses it might
choose.

As for the second problem, I think the words "or a Program enhanced by
the Works" do not actually avoid it.  They only give Ximian the option
to release the entire program (including the patch) rather than the
contributor's patch by itself.  Following this contract wording,
Ximian could release one version of the Program enhanced by the Works
under a free license, and not do so again.  If the text said, instead,
"any version of the Works that Ximian or its successors ever
distributes will be released under an XYZ license; Ximian may also
release it uder another other license terms", then I think it would
close this loophole.


Robert Love wrote:

      If at some time T in the future, a non-free version of
    Evolution was made available, everything prior (t<T) would still be
    available under the previous (presumably still GPL) license.  This is NO
    different than EVERY other piece of software.  Someone always owns the
    copyright and they can do whatever they want.

This is true in many cases, but not for software that has been
assigned to the Free Software Foundation, because FSF assignment
contracts include commitments that apply to all versions we release.