Re: [PDO] Re: [PHP-DEV] PDO 2: Request for Comments

On 28.01.2008, at 13:30, Johannes Schlüter wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Sun, 2008-01-27 at 16:33 -0800, David Fallside wrote:
>>> without signing a piece of paper, still be able to join the  
>>> discussions
>>> about aspects of PDO design in some conference bar? Or would such
>>> discussions be more likely held in a private room between consenting
>> adults,
>>> so to speak, with one eye out for industrial spies?
>>
>> Yes, you would be part of the discussions at the bar or on the  
>> mailing
>> list without signing a piece of paper (I'll buy you a beer) .... the
>> intention of the CLA is to cover material that is committed (in a CVS
>> sense) to the project. With regard the 'private room' discussions the
>> purpose of the CLA (from my perspective) is exactly so that folks can
>> participate without worrying about what is being contributed or who  
>> is
>> listening.
>
> Right, so we sit at a bar, have some nice discussion and I(*) have a
> great idea for PDO, we discuss that idea, improve it and have a great
> idea for PDO. In the next morning you sit down and extend the spec and
> commi-oh, you can't commit it, it wasn't your idea, I have IP rights  
> on
> it, too, did I sign the CLA? Maybe, maybe not, if not you can't take  
> the
> idea and have to forget it. And well, many ideas come from users, we  
> the
> developers just use a small subset of the functionality...

No, its not like that. There are two things IP is concerned with in  
this context:
1) creative expression => copyright
2) inventions => patents

Now the basic assumption is that you did not unknowingly implement  
something that is patented. The proposed CLA does not protect anyone  
against that. For copyright it only really applies to more or less the  
exact form of expression. So unless you guys talked code while  
drinking the beer or whipped out a laptop to actually hack in the  
code, there is no copyright violation here. This is why you can  
usually get around the issue of patches that were submitted without a  
CLA by rewriting them. However rewriting something just because is not  
OSS. Thats legal BS.

Basically PHP has lived on the assumption that people do not  
contribute with evil intend (stealing, laying the ground work for  
patent trolls etc.). This has worked for 99.9999% of all contributions  
and we worked out the issues with for all the other cases. The CLA  
turns this up side down. Suddenly the assumption is that all  
contributions are done with evil intend unless you have an additional  
legal paddle to hit them upside the head. Now this might be Fortune  
500 thinking, but like I have said before, its too late to fix this  
for PHP. So maybe PHP will eventually die because all PHP users will  
get sued to death some day. Until that day we should just focus on  
getting the job done without slowing half the project down. Putting a  
CLA in place would at best protect 5% of the project against such  
attacks and as every security expert can tell you, that aint enough to  
consider the project safe.

Anyways, so far the only core developers that have spoken in favor of  
the CLA are people that participated in the PDOv2 working group. So  
either we are still missing something that was broad up in the  
meetings or maybe its time to move on and drop this CLA discussion.

regards,
Lukas