Experience with Contribution Agreements
Hi there. Matthias suggested this would be a good alias to ask for experience at ASF on Contribution Agreements. Some of you may remember me from my Sun days; I'm now working at RIM and as I apply my experience to our projects I notice situations I had not considered/encountered at Sun [2,3]. The Apache contribution agreement [1] does not seem to include a mechanism by which a signatory of the CA can indicate that future IP is no longer covered. Not something to revoke previous contributions but just for the future, say to be clear of his/her intentions. Is that correct? If so, is it because the need has never arisen?, because its hard to do legally?, because it is very easy to do?, or something else? BTW, as far as I know, Sun didn't have any such mechanism either. Thanks, Eduard/o (Pelegri-Llopart) - OSS @ RIM [1]http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt [2]http://oss.oracle.com/oca-1.3.pdf [3]http://oss.oracle.com/oca-1.4.pdf - To unsubscribe, e-mail: community-unsubscr...@apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: community-h...@apache.org
Re: Experience with Contribution Agreements
Hi Eduardo, Well, I remember you from Sun. ;-) On Feb 15, 2011, at 4:34 PM, eduardo pelegri-llopart wrote: Hi there. Matthias suggested this would be a good alias to ask for experience at ASF on Contribution Agreements. Some of you may remember me from my Sun days; I'm now working at RIM and as I apply my experience to our projects I notice situations I had not considered/encountered at Sun [2,3]. The Apache contribution agreement [1] does not seem to include a mechanism by which a signatory of the CA can indicate that future IP is no longer covered. Not something to revoke previous contributions but just for the future, say to be clear of his/her intentions. Is that correct? If so, is it because the need has never arisen?, because its hard to do legally?, because it is very easy to do?, or something else? BTW, as far as I know, Sun didn't have any such mechanism either. I think the situation isn't well-understood. Once you sign the ICLA, your contributions are covered. If you don't want future contributions to be covered by the agreement, don't contribute any more. If you have a test case for a bug you submit, and don't want the test case to become part of your contribution, there's a tick box on the bug report that says this is not a contribution. What is the situation that you need covered? Regards, Craig Thanks, Eduard/o (Pelegri-Llopart) - OSS @ RIM [1]http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt [2]http://oss.oracle.com/oca-1.3.pdf [3]http://oss.oracle.com/oca-1.4.pdf - To unsubscribe, e-mail: community-unsubscr...@apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: community-h...@apache.org Craig L Russell Secretary, Apache Software Foundation Chair, OpenJPA PMC c...@apache.org http://db.apache.org/jdo - To unsubscribe, e-mail: community-unsubscr...@apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: community-h...@apache.org
Re: Experience with Contribution Agreements
Hi Craig! On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 5:24 PM, Craig L Russell craig.russ...@oracle.com wrote: Hi Eduardo, Well, I remember you from Sun. ;-) :-) I think the situation isn't well-understood. Once you sign the ICLA, your contributions are covered. If you don't want future contributions to be covered by the agreement, don't contribute any more. If you have a test case for a bug you submit, and don't want the test case to become part of your contribution, there's a tick box on the bug report that says this is not a contribution. Didn't know about that tick box; seems a good idea. What is the situation that you need covered? I can think of two cases. One is an unintentional contribution. This seems covered by the ASF ICLA clause about intentionally submitted, which is not present in Sun's SCA. The other is more of a statement where the individual might want to indicate that it no longer is supportive of the institution, but there are other ways to do that. BTW, is there a public list of everybody that has signed an ICLA/CCLA? Something like Sun's [4]. [4] http://sca.java.net/CA_signatories.htm For completeness, the current version of Oracle's CA is OCA 1.6 [5]. I believe it is the same as SCA 1.5, with s/Sun/Oracle/, but not 100% sure. It has several clauses not in the ICLA, including one specific to commercial entities indicates Any contribution we make available under any license will also be made available under a suitable FSF (Free Software Foundation) or OSI (Open Source Initiative) approved license. - that, of course, would not apply to ASF. [5] http://oss.oracle.com/oca.pdf - eduard/o [1]http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt [2]http://oss.oracle.com/oca-1.3.pdf [3]http://oss.oracle.com/oca-1.4.pdf - To unsubscribe, e-mail: community-unsubscr...@apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: community-h...@apache.org
