[Freeipa-devel] contribution policy update, what's next

[Karsten Wade]

On Tue, Aug 04, 2009 at 02:58:24PM -0700, Karsten Wade wrote:
> Yesterday I lurked on a call with Stephen Gallagher and Richard
> Fontana, legal expert on FLOSS licensing.
> 
> Due to audio problems, I wasn't able to fully participate, but I did
> hear an implicit agreement to the contribution policy draft I wrote
> up.
> 
> I think it may need a few tweaks; I'm going to propose some and get
> Richard back on the phone to get an explicit OK from him.

Got some stuff back from Richard a few weeks ago, and came up with a
few thoughts.  Below are Richard's questions and thoughts (quoted with
permission) that lead to these two versions of a contribution policy.

http://freeipa.org/page/User:Quaid/Contribution_policy_(draft)#License-specific_version 
http://freeipa.org/page/User:Quaid/Contribution_policy_(draft)#License-agnostic_version 

Richard looked at the license-specific version, made some suggestions,
then asked if there is a reason for being GPLv2 only as a project and
codebase.  For example, many projects are licensed "GPLv2 or later",
yet there was some confusion around the time that GPLv3 came out if
that was advisable.  Is this project GPLv2-specific on purpose?

He went on with these obsverations:

  There could be difficulties with any selection of a specific
  license.  E.g. suppose FreeIPA has some code under GPLv2 but later
  on decides it wants to license some of it under LGPL, and suppose
  that code incorporates some contributed code. Under this policy,
  FreeIPA will have to go back and get permission from the contributor
  (assume the contribution isn't so trivial as to be uncopyrightable).
  That may be something a project ought to be okay to live with.
  There are other solutions - e.g. contributions could come in under
  LGPL, or even a more permissive license.  But then you get into the
  problem of possibly discouraging potential contributors, the problem
  that is at its extreme with a (bad) CLA or copyright assignment
  scheme.

  I guess I'm just saying - FreeIPA should think about possible ways
  in which it might want licensing flexibility for the future. If it's
  okay being limited to GPLv2 (for incoming contributions) or else
  having to re-gain permission, that's fine. Plenty of projects
  operate in that way.

For that reason I wrote up two versions of the policy, one of which
calls out the GPLv2 specifically, the other calls for contributions to
be under the license of the code/content contributed to, or otherwise
be deemed acceptable by the project.

As for the 'deemed acceptable' part, we could reference the Fedora
list of licenses[1] and call out which ones in particular you would
call acceptable.  Alternately, we could cross that bridge if it
happens; people who contribute may not care to use an alternate
license, and if they do, the policy would point them in the direction
of asking.

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
AD0E0C41
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