directions in Fedora desktop project

[Adam Jackson]

On Wed, 2006-11-29 at 15:33 +0100, Thilo Pfennig wrote:
> Matthew Miller schrieb:
> > On Wed, Nov 29, 2006 at 01:17:57PM +0100, Thilo Pfennig wrote:
> >   
> >> But the wiki is not. And as summit is over no irc contributions. I know
> >> that I may post emails to most fedora lists, but thats not much. I can
> >> also do this on every open mailing lists for any proprietary software.
> >>     
> >
> > Sign the CLA.
> >   
> So everybody in the world should sign the CLA and give Red Hat
> non-exclusive rights to do with the content what they want? I would not
> use a license if this would be my direction. In fact if we do this with
> software (do all software developers have signed the CLA?) this would in
> fact mean that Red Hat has the choice to relicense every bit that is
> contributed and distribute it proprietary. You mighth say: They will
> not. But as Red Hat does not trust me as a free man if I do not sign a
> CLA, why should I trust Red Hat?

Please read the CLA.  Section 2, the Contributor Grant of License, is a
grant to both Red Hat and to _every_ Fedora user.  It states that you
are making your works available to the above-mentioned parties in
perpetuity, and that you have the right to do so (patent and otherwise).
It does _not_ specify the license under which you do so, merely that it
must have the properties of allowing derivative works, public display
and performance, and distribution; Red Hat, and the Fedora Project, must
still respect the license of the work being contributed.  Neither is it
a statement of assignment of copyright.

It's really just a statement of good faith, written in the same
reciprocal spirit as GPLv2, and it explicitly does not grant Red Hat any
special exclusive powers.  I appreciate your caution in legal matters,
but you're attributing properties to the CLA that just aren't there.

- ajax