1:13 p.m.
hi Paul
My understanding to Fedora's CLA is that you are not assigning the full
copyright
to Redhat, rather, you ONLY allow them to "to reproduce, prepare derivative
works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute
your
Contribution and such derivative works; ..."
In another word, if you define your software license as GPLv2, Redhat
can only
create derivative work from your software, therefore, they can only be
GPLv2. Redhat can not own the full copyright and revoke your original
license of your software.
The only word I am not clear is "sublicense", although it does not sound
like "re-license" or "dual-license".
I CCed Fedora legal mailing list, and hope someone can provide a more
definite answer to your concerns.
Qianqian
Paul Hardy wrote:
Qianqian,
I signed up for a Fedora account to submit my work. I then found that
I had to sign a CLA (Contributor License Agreement) before my work
could be submitted to the Fedora project. The CLA requires you to
assign a non-exclusive copyright to Red Hat. If Red Hat has a
copyright to my work, they can circumvent the GPL. For example, they
can make proprietary changes to anything I send them, then have
exclusive rights to change their modified work for profit, denying me
and anyone else access to their proprietary changes.
I therefore do not want to sign the CLA, so I am not going to put
unifont into Fedora myself.
However, please feel free to enter unifont into Fedora if you want.
That way you're entering my work without my signing away a copyright
(thereby giving Red Hat the power to circumvent the GPL).
If you don't want to put unifont into Fedora yourself, I'll let other
people in Fedora who emailed me about this know so one of them can if
they want. I had already told a few (with you CCed on the email) that
I would be bringing the font into Fedora.
Let me know what you want to do one way or another: either put unifont
into Fedora yourself, or let me know you aren't going to do it so I
can email the other people who asked about getting the font into
Fedora.
Thanks!
Paul
11:56 p.m.
New subject: unifont in Fedora
I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice :)
On Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 2:13 PM, Qianqian Fang <fangqq(a)gmail.com> wrote:
hi Paul
My understanding to Fedora's CLA is that you are not assigning the full
copyright
to Redhat, rather, you ONLY allow them to "to reproduce, prepare derivative
works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute
your
Contribution and such derivative works; ..."
This is correct, this is not a copyright assignment, but rather a license grant.
In another word, if you define your software license as GPLv2, Redhat can
only
create derivative work from your software, therefore, they can only be
GPLv2. Redhat can not own the full copyright and revoke your original
license of your software.
They cannot do this - the terms of the GPLv2 apply to that code. They
*can* create derivative works and distribute the result under GPLv2,
however, this is the same right that anyone who has received a copy of
the software can exercise.
The only word I am not clear is "sublicense", although it
does not sound
like "re-license" or "dual-license".
Sublicense in this context means that they can pass the GPLv2 on to
other parties (again, nothing that any other party couldn't do anyway)
> However, please feel free to enter unifont into Fedora if you
want.
> That way you're entering my work without my signing away a copyright
> (thereby giving Red Hat the power to circumvent the GPL).
Much of the work that is packaged in Fedora is not packaged by the
upstream author. Therefore, even if the CLA somehow gave Red Hat
magical powers to relicense stuff (it doesn't), then the actual
praticality of that
10:05 a.m.
New subject: unifont in Fedora
On Sat, 2008-07-26 at 14:13 -0400, Qianqian Fang wrote:
My understanding to Fedora's CLA is that you are not assigning
the
full copyright to Redhat, rather, you ONLY allow them to "to
reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly
perform, sublicense, and distribute your Contribution and such
derivative works; ..."
In another word, if you define your software license as GPLv2, Redhat
can only create derivative work from your software, therefore, they
can only be GPLv2. Redhat can not own the full copyright and revoke
your original license of your software.
This is one of the main reasons why we're in the process of trying to
rework the CLA, that section is not clear at all.
1D says "Any Contribution submitted by you to the Project shall be under
the terms and conditions of this License, without any additional terms
or conditions, unless you explicitly state otherwise in the submission."
We're interpreting that like this (in English):
If you contribute something to Fedora which is properly licensed, we
will use it under the terms of that license. In the case where you
contribute something to us without any license whatsoever, we will use
it under the terms of an extremely permissive license.
Specifically, that license is:
"You hereby grant to Red Hat, Inc., on behalf of the Project, and to
recipients of software distributed by the Project:
(a) 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,
(b) a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, royalty free,
irrevocable (subject to Section 3) patent license to make, have made,
use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer your
Contribution and derivative works thereof, where such license applies
only to those patent claims licensable by you that are necessarily
infringed by your Contribution alone or by combination of your
Contribution with the work to which you submitted the Contribution.
Except for the license granted in this section, you reserve all right,
title and interest in and to your Contributions."
(aka, section 2 of the Individual CLA)
Nowhere in the CLA do you assign copyright to Red Hat, Fedora, or anyone
else.
Thanks,
Tom Callaway, Fedora Legal
(Disclaimer: IANAL, this should not be considered legal advice)
9:24 p.m.
New subject: unifont in Fedora
thank you Tom, and also Jon for an earlier reply. I think your replies
help a lot to convince Paul for his prospective contribution to Fedora.
and I am also looking forward to a more clear statement of CLA on
these discussed issues.
Qianqian
Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
On Sat, 2008-07-26 at 14:13 -0400, Qianqian Fang wrote:
> My understanding to Fedora's CLA is that you are not assigning the
> full copyright to Redhat, rather, you ONLY allow them to "to
> reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly
> perform, sublicense, and distribute your Contribution and such
> derivative works; ..."
>
> In another word, if you define your software license as GPLv2, Redhat
> can only create derivative work from your software, therefore, they
> can only be GPLv2. Redhat can not own the full copyright and revoke
> your original license of your software.
>
This is one of the main reasons why we're in the process of trying to
rework the CLA, that section is not clear at all.
1D says "Any Contribution submitted by you to the Project shall be under
the terms and conditions of this License, without any additional terms
or conditions, unless you explicitly state otherwise in the submission."
We're interpreting that like this (in English):
If you contribute something to Fedora which is properly licensed, we
will use it under the terms of that license. In the case where you
contribute something to us without any license whatsoever, we will use
it under the terms of an extremely permissive license.
Specifically, that license is:
"You hereby grant to Red Hat, Inc., on behalf of the Project, and to
recipients of software distributed by the Project:
(a) 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,
(b) a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, royalty free,
irrevocable (subject to Section 3) patent license to make, have made,
use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer your
Contribution and derivative works thereof, where such license applies
only to those patent claims licensable by you that are necessarily
infringed by your Contribution alone or by combination of your
Contribution with the work to which you submitted the Contribution.
Except for the license granted in this section, you reserve all right,
title and interest in and to your Contributions."
(aka, section 2 of the Individual CLA)
Nowhere in the CLA do you assign copyright to Red Hat, Fedora, or anyone
else.
Thanks,
Tom Callaway, Fedora Legal
(Disclaimer: IANAL, this should not be considered legal advice)
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3 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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Jon Stanley -
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Tom Callaway