On Thu, Jul 01, 2004 at 07:12:56PM +1200, Nick Phillips wrote: > On Wed, Jun 30, 2004 at 05:00:54PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > > On Thu, Jun 10, 2004 at 04:51:06PM -0400, Michael Poole wrote: > > > # Unless otherwise specified, all modifications, corrections or > > > # extensions to this work which alter its source code become the > > > # property of Best Practical Solutions, LLC when submitted for > > > # inclusion in the work. > > > It is not just GPL-incompatible, it is non-free. > > > > Your modifications, corrections, or extensions have value. Best > > Practical Solutions, LLC, is asserting ownership in something you have > > created. > > No, it's not. It's only saying that *if* you submit them for inclusion in > the work. Incorrect. It doesn't say "you" anywhere in that clause. > Nothing is forcing you to do that. Right; but it remains true even if someone steals your modifications, corrections or extensions to the work off your computer and submits them to Best Practical Solutions, LLC. The license places no restrictions on who performs the act of submission, or under what circumstances the submission is made. If Best Practical doesn't mean the clause to be interpreted so broadly, they shouldn't have written it so broadly. "When submitted" does not indicate who submits it. Given that, your changes effectively become the property of Best Practical as soon as they are written -- unless you're an omnipotent being who can prevent them from ever falling into Best Practical's hands. > I think it's different. Their intention is obvious Not to me. Their intention is not stated in the license. You are conjecturing. > -- to cover their arses against the possibility that someone submits a > patch and then sues for a portion of their profits. That's plausible. It is not, however, necessarily true. > If you don't want to pass ownership of your patch > to them, don't send it in. This is merely an attempt to reduce the hassle > of accepting patches. Please play closer attention to what the license *actually says*. > It seems reasonable to me. That the license you imagine seems reasonable doesn't have a lot of bearing on the reasonableness of the license we're actually dealing with. > > IMO the author of request-tracker3 needs to be contacted ASAP and their > > intentions confirmed. It is possible this clause was inserted into the > > license without its ramifications being properly considered -- > > particularly given that it is GPL-incompatible and RT is deeply > > commingled with many Perl modules licensed under the GNU GPL. > > Whatever I think about the reasonableness of the condition and its DFSG- > freeness, you may have a point here. I'm not saying they don't mean what you think they mean. But if they do, they should say so. -- G. Branden Robinson | Do not attempt to disprove the Debian GNU/Linux | four-colour theorem on your flag! branden@debian.org | -- Josh Parsons http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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