Re: License forms

On Wednesday, November 20, 2002, at 03:34  PM, Dave Storrs wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 20, 2002 at 05:55:12PM -0500, Bryan C. Warnock wrote:
> [eventual need to refuse stuff from unlicensed people]
>
>> Hard and fast?  ie, patches, even for a simple typo?  Or new work, as
>> corrections to a licensed document should imply concurrence.
>
> I'm very glad to say that I'm not the one who has to make that
> call. :>  I'm not sure who is--maybe MikeL (as the chief ListOp), or
> maybe someone at the Perl Documentation Project--but it ain't me.

Yeah, well.  We don't really have an official pumpking yet, and I've 
been personally avoiding the issue until we get our sea legs.

I've been acting as the unofficial one, since I'm the sap that 
recommended we start the docs now, and probably the one who'll be doing 
much of the outlining/writing/editing.  I'm happy to do it 
"officially", but if there is anyone else who actively wants the 
position, let me or Allison know, and we'll figure it out.

---

As far as that particular question, I'm personally pretty comfortable 
that if you're posting to a mailing list, you know you're putting your 
ideas into the general public discourse.  The catch is whether you have 
the "right" to give those ideas at all, or if your employer owns 
everything you do via a nasty IP clause.  Note that even if your boss 
is a good guy, that doesn't mean someone else won't enter the company 
later with different ideas.

I don't think anyone would reasonably lay claim to spelling 
corrections, etc.  But even small patches could potentially be affected 
by the nasty employer-IP thing, if you end up submitting a decent 
number of them over time, or if one represents sheer intellectual 
brilliance that "improves" the project.

The scenario to be avoided is if you eventually submit enough small 
patches to represent a recognizable contribution to the project, _then_ 
Dave asks you to fill in the form and your employer refuses to let you; 
in essence giving legal notice that we *don't* have rights to stuff we 
had been using.  Then we'd have to remove every meaningful patch & 
contribution by you, while figuring out what other things might have 
been tainted by that IP claim.

MikeL