Hi Gerry, all,
G. Roderick Singleton schrieb:
On Mon, 2007-02-05 at 13:26 +0100, Frank Peters wrote:
G. Roderick Singleton wrote:
As I pointed out to Aurélien, template creators must sign the JCA before
their work can be considered. Wish it were not so but that is the
current situation. I have heard from others that this situation is being
examined for a change to a more open way to contribute templates et
cetera. Hope it happens but right now we are stuck with JCA :-(
I don't really understand why JCA is such a problem. It is a legal
requirement to stay flexible. The original contributor will *never*
lose the copyright for his/her contributions, he/she just shares it
with Sun being the OOo "umbrella" legal entity.
Not too surprized by your statement. For normal users, JCA is a barrier.
Of course it's a barrier, but not a very high one. And a normal user
will not turn into a contributor depending on signing JCA or not.
If I want to contribute to OOo, and if I'm asked to sign JCA, there are
three possibilities:
- I'm fundamentally against giving someone else (here Sun) the
possibility to license my work differently.
In this case my work is not going to become part of the main package,
mainly because of the legal issues Frank mentioned. But it can be added
in an extension, downloaded from the website or anything similar.
- I understand the reason for this paper and send it to Sun (perhaps
after sending it as fax before).
This should be the normal case IMHO - and many people did do so without
any problem.
- I don't want to spend the time and money (stamp) for printing, signing
and sending JCA. That's my choice - Result is quite the same as in the
first case. Ain's example is valid, no question. If you have to send the
JCA via snail mail in any case, prior email notification should be
possible IMHO.
If that makes no sense to you then I suggest that you ask around.
Depends on where you ask around ;-)
This is also to protect the project from people infringing anyones
rights. Assume, that someone contributes plagiarized copyrighted
content to documents. The original copyright holder could make
the OOo project accountable for such copyright infringements if
there are no JCAs signed by the contributor where he/she assures
that he/she has the right to contribute that content.
Those wishing to contribute directly to the code base with templates et
cetera can simply follow the directions given at
http://contributing.openoffice.org/programming.html#jca
and proceed.
Or may be asked afterwards - there is no problem about it in my eyes.
Lastly, without one entity holding the shared(!) copyright
of the work, it would be practically impossible for the community
to change licensing or usage of the content since it would require
the explicit approval of each copyright holder.
But I assume this has all been discussed before.
Many times.
... but I never say any tendency towards understanding the reasons for
such a legal "umbrella" by their opponents.
Best regards
Bernhard
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