I see this as a tension between ideals.
One ideal, ours, is an open process in which the barrier to entry for participation is zero, both for the participant as well as for the ASF, as it's all volunteer, and anything administrative like this costs individual their personal time as they do the work. (Thanks Jim!)
The other ideal is that there is a set of legal frameworks (because we're international in scope) in which all of this activity does take place, like it or not, and we need to be sure that what we do in that context appropriately safeguards the interests of everyone - the ASF, the users, the committers, and others outside of our community. I added the last one because if OSS is deemed to be reckless in terms of these issues, we're going to have a backlash against us, or a dropoff in use due to fear.
In your case, what does this mean that you can't get a "formal agreement" from the legal dept? Is that related to your employment contract / agreement? Does this mean that there are rights that they hold and don't want to give up? Or does it mean that our CCLA is too broad/narrow/wrong/whatever? (I've heard feedback about our CCLA to that end...)
Is there some other kind of document we could create to help this?
geir
On Mar 25, 2005, at 8:19 AM, Jochen Wiedmann wrote:
On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 13:41:31 -0500, Geir Magnusson Jr. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I've proposed asking that a CCLA be required from everyone with an employer specifically to protect the employee as well as the ASF, to prevent accidentally (or intentionally) submarining IP into a project.
I realize that this is an additional burden for contributors and the foundation, but... ("SCO, anyone?")
This is not an additional burden. For me, this would mean to choose between my role as an Apache committer and my employment. I'd never get a formal agreement from our legal department. I already had discussions in the past, which I do not want to repeat, about the question whether I am even able to assign copyright to the ASF.
Jochen
-- Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, its too dark to read. (Groucho Marx)
-- Geir Magnusson Jr +1-203-665-6437 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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