The contributor´s agreement does seem to say that. I have not checked all the variations (yet).


http://www.canonical.com/contributors/faq

Read the actual agreement, not the FAQ.

2 current versions, both have the relevant sections.

http://www.canonical.com/sites/defau...-CLA-ANY-I.pdf
http://www.canonical.com/sites/defau...-CLA-ANY-E.pdf

Section 2.1(b)-

Translation- Canoncial (non-exclusively) 'owns' your cotruibutions and do with them as they wish. If that wasnt clear enough-

Canonical can even take your contributed code, close it up and sell it to anyone they want.

Have you actually seen canoncials financial figures, or is this just based on media reports/rumours?

In 2009 Shuttleworth said that canoncial was 'creeping toward $30 million' and '$30 million a year is self-sustaining revenue'

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/bu...caDZpkRHVoybBA

I havent seen Shuttleworth or anyone else from canonical for that matter say anything about canonicals financial status since then. With the banshee furor, the 'donation page' and the deals with amazon, I would guess that canonical is well into the black now.

If Shuttleworth wants to make a for profit and its not making a profit, that is his problem.....and its not 'welfare' at all.

But it really doesnt matter on this subject. But I'm out of time to post any more, I'll try to get that done later.

For someone who appears to be extremely interested in legal issues I have to wonder why you only looked at the FAQ. You can't seriously think for a moment that a FAQ is a legally binding document. Read Cascades post below your last one to see what the legal documents say.

While you are at it go and take a look at Ubuntu Forums and see if you can find any threads on their license agreement where people, like myself, argued against it. You probably wont now considering a couple of years ago, just as I stopped posting partially because of this exact issue, they decided to "archive" (read clean up and hide from general view) alot of the forums that the "authorities of UF" felt were of no use to the general Ubuntu using public.

There are links from the FAQ to the contract. I did glance at those and I still think that their contracts do not really go beyond the GNU GPL. The problem seems to be that contributors get upset if someone else makes money out of their work - which they otherwise are prepared to let go off for free.

The philosophy of the initial open source drive (as manifested by the GNU documentation) does not appear to frown on charging for distributing work. So, again, contributors go into this with open eyes.

I can appreciate the anger and the solution would appear to lie in channeling back to the contributor a % of the income (if generated). It seems that a practical way of doing this would be the major problem.

What I also suspect is that this problem probably affects a very small percentage of people using for example Ubuntu. How many Ubuntu contributors would there be (as opposed to users)? My suspicion is that a very large percentage of those using open source stuff is unable to change the programs (meaningfully) or to contribute software on the required level. In other words, it should be possible to solve this problem on a developer level by negotiations with the individuals concerned. Perhaps an open source trade union is called for developers/code crunchers.

The agreements themselves confirm that the copyright is retained by the creator and that Canonical is mainly licensed to distribute the contribution.

The creator is free to exploit his contribution as he seems fit regardless of what Canonical does (my interpretation).


When patent rights are also involved

In other words this is merely to ensure than when Canonical distributes the contribution, such distribution is not endangered by patent rights remaining in the creator.

What is a bit fuzzy (for me) is the following in the Outbound license terms:

What this seems to do is to ensure that when the contribution is incorporated into a project, the contribution is licensed under the license terms prevailing at the time when the contribution is submitted - but don´t quote me. In other words, if the overall project is licensed under open source conditions, the contribution will also be licensed under those conditions.

Copyright (and patent) law is a pretty esoteric legal area. What complicate matters further here is the fact that the contract provides it is to be interpreted by English Law. Only an English legal practitioner will be able to say with a measure of confidence what the position is at the tight spots.

As regards Canonical´s financial position, I only know that some years ago it was said that they are running at a loss. I suspect that one must assume that since about 2004 Shuttleworth has been pouring money into a loss making entity (almost 10 years now). So, if he is turning a profit, good for him. I cannot see how anyone can begrudge him that. Despite assurances that Red Hat shows that Open source can be run profitably, it seems to me a rather precarious venture where the core of your efforts has to be financed by sidelines. Not that distribution for profit is not allowed by the general philosophy:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html#header

Profit is also a problem here. Surely those involved (including Shuttleworth) are entitled to reasonable salaries and returns on their investments? Then you have expansion which must be financed. What is an indecent profit in this case? 5 cents above breaking even?

I also wonder if he (Shuttleworth) happens to be the only shareholder. Neither here not there. Does anyone know?

Have you missed the part cascade9 posted already in #32?In other words "we can take your code at any time into one of our new projects and close it down. Or we just relicense an existing project to a closed license."
That is in direct opposition to the GPL. You may keep the copyright to your code, but you totally loose control about its license in Canonical's projects.

It seems to me that in open source distributions you lose control anyway. Your work can be copied, amended, changed, charged for etc. In fact, it is of the essence of the philosophy that you cannot prevent that. Or am I missing something?

What I do think is objectionable is that they take away your moral rights (which includes your right to have your name associated with the software -assuming that the term embraces what SA law does).

Yes, you are missing something. If code is contributed under the GPL license to a project without a Canonical style CLA the code has to be GPL licensed forever. Only the copyright holder can change the license, the project you contributed to can't. In their own projects Canonical can change the license at any time, regardless what you as the copyright holder of the code think of it. They actually can say: "Hey, your code is good, but you know what? We will use it in three of our other projects, but we don't care about you licensing it under GPL, those projects will be closed source and there is nothing you can do about it!"
That is exactly the scenario the GPL tries to prevent.
GPL with Canonical's CLA is nothing but a BSD license in disguise, but a BSD license that only is valid for Canonical. A nice thing for them, but without any ethics. At least they would have been honest if they would have used a BSD or MIT style license from the beginning, but honesty is something I would not expect from Canonical or Shuttleworth (oh, and not having the GPL lable on their projects would have pushed away many of their contributors). For me and many others Shuttleworth and Canonical have lost any credibility.

For Canonical to use those contributions in a GPL license, they need those consents...and once they have used them in a GPL license, the cat is out of the bag.

It seems to me that is why this clause which I quoted before, is important, as it ties them to the license at the stage the contribution is submitted:


I´ll admit that there are loopholes here for it may well be that at the stage of the contribution the license has not been determined yet.

The CLA explicitly permits Canonical to relicense the code, so there is no cat in the bag from the beginning. It doesn't matter which license the code had initially when they can just relicense it. They can do it, because the contributor, the copyright holder, has explicitly given Canonical the license to do it, otherwise he is not allowed to contribute to their projects.

Their right to relicense is conditional upon the project having been issued under the initial license first.


The question of course is what the initial license is and to what extent they can deviate from a proposed license in respect of a new start-up. Opting for a different license after having indicated that it would be a GPL might afford relief under the rules governing misrepresentation.

Regardless of what they do, the contributor would retain his rights to market the software himself in whatever form. Is this not an important consideration? I suspect that their thinking is that value is added to the overall product as a result of the Canonical input (and the mix of various contributions). Consequently (I suspect) the argument is that if there is money to be made, they are entitled to it.

The following comments are made as a matter of interest (well, new and interesting to me - a newbie).

Although the GNU GPL model allows money to me made from distribution there is this prohibition:


So, my suggestion previously that one could perhaps negotiate for a portion of income (if realised) would run counter to this as long as we are talking open source.

On similar lines in the same model agreement

That simply means 'canonical will release the software/code under whatever licence is being used at that time for that type of submission'.

It never states that the licence will be GPL, or any other open source licence.

The writer of any subbmitted code remains legally owned by them. Some or all of that code can be used on different projects. Because of the way that the GPL is worded, they can not take the project as a whole and 'market' that. It remains GPLed or under canonical control to do with as they wish.

Canonical only needs/wants the contributors agreement signed for Canonical in-house projects which they then have 100% control over. If they were just interested in being able to sell a closed version, they could have used a BSD style licence or dual BSD/GPL. If they had of taken a BSD licence, they would haev to put up the copyright notice, which sort of gives away that the software or some code is originally from an open source project.

It would be 'neater', 'cleaner' and more attractive to closed source software supliers (or hardware suppliers who want software to go with the hardware) to avoid having to post up a BSD style copyright notice.

That is why Red Hat does not charge for downloading or trying Red Hat OSes. There is a charge for 'support', which is one way Red Hat makes its money (other ways include training, and integration services).

Hardly. Red Hat is a giant in the open source linux world. If Canonical died tomorrow, there would be little or zero impact to linux as a whole. If Red Hat died tomorrow, the linux kernel and connected projects would at the very least slow right down.

If that was the case legally, Red Hat is entitled to a huge amount of any possible cacnonical revenue.

Most linux kernel development is done by Red Hat, and they are a major player in a huge number of other projects.

There is IMO (I am not a lawyer) no way you could negotiate for a portion of income. See section 2.1(b).

Because its a private company we have no idea who owns how much of canonical. For all we know, GW Bush is now a 45% owner of canonical.

Well, Shuttleworth said thye were running at a loss. I believe that they were for a while......but who knows? We cant check, the isle of man is a 'tax haven' for more reasons than just the taxation rate.

This has very little to do with the court case that this thread was originally about. I dont see any legal reason why the existance or profitablility of canonical should have any impact on the court case.

True. I switched off my own 'agenda' and went with the flow of comments. Very little of the thread deals with the main issue.

A question for the more legal minded: In theory could canonical sue you for patent infringement if you later attempted to redistribute your own code under a copyleft licence - after they had released it under a proprietary one and acquired a suitable patent???

I would guess that the clue to the answer lies in 'non-exclusive...patent license' In other words, you would retain the patent rights (as with copyright) and your rights would at least be co-extensive with theirs.