ICLA and CCLA -- was Experience with Contribution Agreements
(Follow-up to my mail from a while back) We (RIM) have started using a slightly modified version of Apache's ICLA CCLA for our nascient Open Source projects. So far, so good. But there is an angle where I could benefit again from your experience. Some employee contracts have a variation of a statement that says IP generated by the employee in different conditions is owned by the company. Ignoring how/whether local laws (like California) void this... a company can argue that they don't want their employees to sign ICLAs b/c they don't own IP and thus only CCLAs are applicable. ASF [1] explicitly indicates that its requiring both ICLA and CCLAs: [1] http://www.apache.org/licenses/#clas Note that a Corporate CLA does not remove the need for every developer to sign their own CLA as an individual, to cover any of their contributions which are not owned by the corporation signing the CCLA. Another argument for requiring both ICLA and CCLA is to cover contributions from the individual after he or she has stopped working for the corporation that signed the CCLA - without relying on the cooperation of the employee or the employer to notify ASF of the change. Am I interpreting correctly the practice used by ASF on this area? Do you ever get challenged? What do you do if you are? Do you have a list of CCLA signatories anywhere? I only see the ICLA list. Thanks, Eduardo
Re: Experience with Contribution Agreements
Hi Eduardo, there is a list of committers (they have all submitted the ICLA) and the page also contains the contributors (non-committers), that signed the individual CLA: http://people.apache.org/committer-index.html (search for Persons with signed CLAs but are not committers) HTH, Matthias On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 5:12 AM, eduardo pelegri-llopart pele...@calterra.com wrote: 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 -- Matthias Wessendorf blog: http://matthiaswessendorf.wordpress.com/ sessions: http://www.slideshare.net/mwessendorf twitter: http://twitter.com/mwessendorf - To unsubscribe, e-mail: community-unsubscr...@apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: community-h...@apache.org
Re: Experience with Contribution Agreements
Perfect. Thanks. It's always very useful to be able to borrow best practices from other communities. - eduard/o On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 5:30 AM, Matthias Wessendorf mat...@apache.org wrote: Hi Eduardo, there is a list of committers (they have all submitted the ICLA) and the page also contains the contributors (non-committers), that signed the individual CLA: http://people.apache.org/committer-index.html (search for Persons with signed CLAs but are not committers) HTH, Matthias On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 5:12 AM, eduardo pelegri-llopart pele...@calterra.com wrote: 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 -- Matthias Wessendorf blog: http://matthiaswessendorf.wordpress.com/ sessions: http://www.slideshare.net/mwessendorf twitter: http://twitter.com/mwessendorf - To unsubscribe, e-mail: community-unsubscr...@apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: community-h...@apache.org
Re: Experience with Contribution Agreements
Cool. Always nice to see communities in sync. Craig On Feb 16, 2011, at 10:18 AM, eduardo pelegri-llopart wrote: Perfect. Thanks. It's always very useful to be able to borrow best practices from other communities. - eduard/o On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 5:30 AM, Matthias Wessendorf mat...@apache.org wrote: Hi Eduardo, there is a list of committers (they have all submitted the ICLA) and the page also contains the contributors (non-committers), that signed the individual CLA: http://people.apache.org/committer-index.html (search for Persons with signed CLAs but are not committers) HTH, Matthias On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 5:12 AM, eduardo pelegri-llopart pele...@calterra.com wrote: 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 -- Matthias Wessendorf blog: http://matthiaswessendorf.wordpress.com/ sessions: http://www.slideshare.net/mwessendorf twitter: http://twitter.com/mwessendorf - 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
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
