Re: [opennms-devel] [PATCH] Timezone support in OpenNMS

> For reference, below is the current Sun contributor agreement 
> (SCA) that
> I am quite fond of.  I like the ideas of joint ownership, forcing the
> contribution(s) to be licensed under (at least) an FSF or OSI license,
> its straight-forward language, and the fact that it fits on a page
> (sometimes I'm amazingly easy to please).  Being built for multiple
> jurisdictions (e.g.: it should be enforceable in more places that just
> the U.S.) is a nice bonus.
> 
> http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/sca.pdf
> 
> Here's a FAQ on the SCA, going right to the "Benefits of a Contributor
> Agreement" section:
> 
> http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/contributor_agreement.jsp#ca_1
> 
> I would love to hear about what you think about contributor agreements
> in general, or the SCA in specific, either publicly or privately.

If I may jump in here (this is an area I'm strongly interested in making
crystal clear):

The SCA looks good, and I think it would be good to use it as a starting
point.  A couple of points:
1) I'm not keen on the ability of the other party ("us") to sublicense
the copyright to third parties.  That gives some future inheritor the
right to license the copyright to some arbitrary third party (say some
related company also owned by said future inheritor) who can then
release closed-source versions.
2) Similarly, para 4 implies the possibility of dual-licensing (like
MySQL), and I am strongly against that, to the point where I'd seriously
reconsider making any contributions under such an agreement.
Incidentally, I don't see anywhere in para 4 which even this
dual-licensing of any third-party licensees (an possible oversight
IMHO).

IANAL, but I pretend to be one on mailing lists.  Paranoid security
habits transfer well to the legal world :-)

Craig
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