directions in Fedora desktop project

[Peter Gordon]

email at pfennigsolutions.de wrote:
> Adam Jackson schrieb:
>> 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
>>
>>
> I did exactly that, often.
> "You hereby grant to Red Hat, Inc. .... a perpetual, non-exclusive,
> worldwide, fully paid-up, royalty free, irrevocable copyright license to
> reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly
> perform, sublicense, and distribute your Contribution and such
> derivative works; and, "
>
> So in my words I would say I grant Red Hat an irrvocalbe copyright
> license. Why all this CLA thingy? read the words of karsten Wade:
>
You're not reading the full CLA. Your ellipsis in the quote omits
some important text:
"[...] You hereby grant to Red Hat, Inc., on behalf of the Project,  
and to recipients of software distributed by the Project: [...]"

This means that anyone who receives a copy of the software or content that
is by someone's contributions to the Fedora Project receives these full
copyleft permissions (to redistribute and/or modify, et al.)

> [...] Now if people contribute under CLA&OPL
> Red Hat can relicense this stuff, because they not only have the content
> licensed under OPL, but they also do have the full copy right [sic].
> So they can relicense under different free licenses or do what they want
> with it.

Red Hat does not own copyright to the code or content which is contributed
to Fedora. They, like all other redistributors, have only a *license* to
redistribute and/or modify it under these copyleft terms.

> We have free licenses that give us all the rights we need. The Wikipedia
> works like that, also. There is no other reason for the CLA as to have
> the possibility to impropriate the content of the contributors.

We have these Free licenses, yes. However, signing the CLA ensures that
every contribution one makes to the Fedora Project is Free and legal.

> Fact is: I do not contribute any more and many people do not so, either.
> Enforcing the CLA ment favouring legal concerns above user
> contributions.

Unfortunately, Red Hat and the Fedora Project are both based in the United
States, a country which is huge on litigations and legal implications and
infractions. Therefore, great legal care must be taken when dealing with
matters of copyright, trademark, and patent law.
-- 
Peter Gordon (codergeek42)
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