On 12/08/2011 04:52 PM, Jerome Martin wrote: > Andy, > > I think you made part your position clear, and overall, if you felt > you had to fork that code, so be it. That part is totally fine for me. > This is to grant that right among others that we released the code > under an open source licence. > > However, I think you are purposefully eluding the main question: > > How can you affirm that our contribution model is "against the spirit > of free software", imply that it is unhealthy, and at the same time > endorse your own employer's policies (c.f. references in my initial > reply) ? > > If you're being honest, in the light of your own argumentation, you > simply can't. > > So please, could you either confirm that you think that Red Hat's > routine contribution models (described earlier) are unhealthy and > "against the spirit of free software" or explain why your arguments > would apply only to our project but not your employer's ? Sometimes CLAs are used to minimize any questions about software ownership, or to allow the entire thing to be re-licensed at some future point. I believe this is the general purpose of CLAs by Red Hat, and the reason for the ones you mention[1][2]. Take for example the one for JBoss Application Server: https://cla.jboss.org/contributions/view_cla.seam?type=i&cid=881 (select JBoss App Server) "2) You hereby grant to Red Hat, its successors, and assigns, the non-exclusive, transferable, irrevocable, perpetual, royalty-free right to use, modify, copy, sell, and distribute the Contributions under the terms of any version of the GNU General Public License, or any version of the GNU Lesser General Public License. Without limitation, this grant is made with respect to any copyright, patent, or other intellectual property or moral rights You may have in or to the Contributions." It says you grant RH the right to distribute it only under the GPL. RTS's CLA says you give RTS the right to do anything with it, including putting it in a non-FOSS product, and indeed the whole point for it existing is to do this. That is why it is against the spirit of the GPL. Regards -- Andy [1] and I don't think Alfresco is part of RH [2] I am just a dev, I am not up with all legal aspects of the company so maybe I am wrong, but if there is a CLA-for-proprietary-use around, I would personally be against it and would raise hell. PS I AM NOT A LAWYER, this is not legal advice PPS STILL NOT A LAWYER -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe target-devel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
