On 2011-02-18 12:16:32 (+0900), Satoru Matsumoto
Pascal Bleser wrote: [...]
It's just a matter of deciding what we want people/organizations to do with our content (be it text or artwork): 1) may be used for commercial purposes? 2) must modifications remain under the same or a similar license? 3) attribution to the original authors (us, the openSUSE project)? 4) ownership remains with the original author?
I'm sure we can all agree on points 2, 3 and 4 ("yes", "yes", "yes".)
Point 1 is debatable (IMHO: "no" for text content, "yes" for artwork.)
Indeed. The primary concern here might be whether those works can be included in SUSE Linux Enterprise distributions or not - in other words, whether that is considered 'commercial purpose' or not.
Didn't think of that, and SLE isn't my primary concern to be honest. But, sure, if we find an option that enables Novell to use our community work in SLE or similar products, why not, would obviously be a fair return. [...]
And one thing what I proposed in another post but hasn't be discussed yet is, whether we should adopt 'Contributor License Agreement' or not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement
If we can adopt CLA, I think the situations would be much clearer than ever, but there may be pros and cons for this. So, I want to hear your opinions.
It has pros and cons. But given the discussion we're having, and
given the extreme difficulties of adapting a license after the
fact without having a CLA, I would personally be in favour.
But the CLA *must* be crystal clear about what sort of licenses we
would consider in the future or, rather, give very clear
guarantees, e.g.:
* the content will always remain under an OSI compliant or CC
license
* the content will always remain usable and modifiable by FOSS
projects
* modifications of the content will always have to remain under
the same license, or a similar licenses that guarantees the same
as above
Apart from that, I don't think any of us would mind giving the
ownership of our contributions to the project. That might even
be easier once we have a foundation, as the foundation could be
the recipient of that ownership, rather than just saying "the
project" (which does not have any legal form as of now.)
cheers
--
-o) Pascal Bleser