On Thu, 31 Oct 2013 18:10:31 +0000, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 10:14:06AM -0400, Barry Warsaw wrote:
> > Actually, contributing to Upstart does not require copyright assignment (as
> > for example, would contributing to an FSF-owned GNU project). Instead, it
> > requires a Contributor License Agreement be signed:
> > http://www.canonical.com/contributors
> Quoting from the PDF linked from that page ("Canonical Individual
> Contributor License Agreement" for individual contributors):
>
> Based on the grant of rights in Sections 2.1 and 2.2, if We
> include Your Contribution in a Material, We may license the
> Contribution under any license, including copyleft,
> permissive, commercial, or proprietary licenses.
I also re-read this PDF today, and I'm a bit confused.
My prior understanding (and personal POV) was, as you say:
> In other words, Canonical gets the right to take a free software
> contribution and make it proprietary. The contributors gets to own the
> software, and can continue releasing it as free software, but can't
> prevent Canonical from making non-free versions of it. I don't find
> that an acceptable situation.
But I saw today that this paragraph goes on with:
As a condition on the exercise of this right, We agree to also
license the Contribution under the terms of the license or
licenses which We are using for the Material on the Submission
Date.
My understanding (as a non-expert on legalese en_*) is, that Canonical
would only be allowed to re-license the Contribution under a
dual-license scheme, with (a) the original license, and (b)
$whatever-they-want.
Is this interpretation correct? Or am I mis-reading the "which We are
_using_" part, or something else?
Of course, relicensing under $free+$whatever is still debatable but
at least it's a different issue then "they can turn it into
proprietary software", at least for me.
I think a clarification from the upstart maintainers and/or other
savvy people on this issue would be helpful for the whole discussion,
since -- as I understand it -- this CLA question is one of the major
roadblocks for the adoption of upstart as the default init system in
Debian.
Cheers,
gregor
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