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Old 01-21-2014, 03:14 PM   #1
jeremy
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Linus Torvalds: Any CLA is fundamentally broken


Quote:
Canonical is often criticized for its CLAs – Contributor License Agreements – by the larger Open Source community. Ironically Canonical is not the only company which requires CLAs, even communities like FSF or ASF require CLAs. Since Canonical is not a community, but a for-profit company, what makes their CLAs so bad considering that companies like Google don’t get the same criticism for their CLAs? What makes Canonical’s CLA so bad whereas when everyone else is also doing the same thing?

Matthew says that Canonical could have made their CLA more friendly by replacing it with something from Harmony Project which, he says, “Canonical could easily replace their CLA with one that removed this asymmetry – Project Harmony, the basis of Canonical’s CLA, permits you to specify an “inbound equals outbound” agreement that prevents upstream from relicensing under a proprietary license[2]. Canonical’s deliberate choice not to do so just strengthens the argument that the CLA is primarily about wanting to produce proprietary versions of software rather than wanting to strengthen their case in any copyright or patent disputes. It’s unsurprising that people feel disinclined to contribute to projects under those circumstances, and it’s difficult to understand why Canonical simultaneously insist on this hostile behaviour and bemoan the lack of community contribution to Canonical projects.”

However, father of the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds weighs in with a different opinion. He says, “To be fair, people just like hating on Canonical. The FSF and Apache Foundation CLA’s are pretty much equally broken. And they may not be broken because of any relicencing, but because the copyright assignment paperwork ends up basically killing the community. Basically, with a CLA, you don’t get the kind of “long tail” that the kernel has of random drive-by patches. And since that’s how lots of people try the waters, any CLA at all – changing the license or not – is fundamentally broken.”
What's your opinion on Contributor License Agreements?

More at Muktware...

--jeremy
 
Old 01-21-2014, 04:43 PM   #2
ukiuki
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From the same link:
Quote:
But things change when Canonical does that as they use GNU GPLv3 which prohibits any code to be made proprietary. Their CLA conflicts the licence they use as it give Canonical the rights to release their software under a proprietary licence.

Matthew says, “Canonical ship software under the GPLv3 family of licenses (GPL, AGPL and LGPL) but require that contributors sign an agreement that permits Canonical to relicense their contributions under a proprietary license. This is a fundamentally different situation to almost all widely accepted CLAs, and it’s disingenuous for Canonical to defend their CLA by pointing out the broad community uptake of, for instance, the Apache CLA.”

Many in the free software community are of the same opinion and that’s the reason why they are skeptical of Canonical’s CLA. Greg KH says, “I agree, +Matthew Garrett has summarized this quite nicely as to why people object so much to Canonical’s CLA.

So much so, that someone mentioned to me that CLA should stand for “Community Limiting Arrangement”, not “Contributor License Agreement”.”
That is just obvious and any one with a bit of malice can see the real intentions behind it, there is only one reason, money, and to get all that money whoever is behind it need to control the flow of it. That is what corporations are all about, Money and control.
They have been doing it with almost everything, banks, media, oil, food, just to mention some areas; and now free software is in line it seens, all those small gaps with CLA will probably lead to a major problem, no wonder why is already been exploited. And some entities will sneakly paint a different picture about this. Ultimately this is what divide and conquer means.

We have been warned many times.
Quote:
"There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed." ~ Mahatma Gandhi
 
Old 01-21-2014, 06:36 PM   #3
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My issue with Canonical's CLA is the section that ukiuki highlighted above. If I volunteered my time and effort to make, or fix, something only to later find someone or some corporation has gone and taken my work as their own or changed the terms of usage of that work I'd be unhappy about it. I translate various things and have provided scripts, and modified scripts provided by others, to help in translation (one of them was even posted here in LQ and LQ community members helped with it), if I signed it over to Canonical that would be a breach of trust to those that helped me with the script and something I would not do. Likewise I know of information provided on pages supported by Canonical (Ubuntu specific pages) that are language specific (Australian English). Who owns the rights to the technical details of my mother tongue? Certainly not Canonical yet their CLA if they chose to enforce it would forbid me or anyone else from using material that is located on one of their sites and I think that would be regardless of whether it is located anywhere else or not.
 
Old 01-21-2014, 11:28 PM   #4
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There always seems to be a lot of confusion about Canonical's CLA (I would guess mostly driven by ill-informed or outright malicious bloggers).
If someone contributes under Canonical's CLA he is not giving up his copyright to the code (the CLA is a license agreement, not a copyright assignment), so the same code can still be used in other projects if the author wishes to do that.
All code contributed to a project using Canonical's CLA is licensed as GPL v3, so anyone can use it, can fork those projects, ... . The contributed code is protected by the GPL and can not be closed down.
The real intent of Canonical's CLA is to give Canonical the right to dual license the code, they can release it to their partners under a different license. From a business point of view this makes sense, since Canonical is aiming at the mobile and embedded market, where the GPL, especially v3, is not appreciated by most companies.
Dual licensing is something many projects do and it is even something the FSF deems to be an OK business model. You rarely see people complain about Digia, which has the exact same business model with Qt, it seems really to be more cool to bash Canonical instead.
 
Old 01-22-2014, 01:51 AM   #5
k3lt01
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Tobi did you see the section ukiuki highlighted? How do you interpret it?

I interpret it as Canonical reserves the right to change the license on anything anyone contributes. I don't see a discussion about copyright here I see a discussion about licensing software that was initially distributed under one license but Canonical believes it can re-license under another agreement (even proprietary) simply because the contributor signed an agreement allowing them to do so. If Canonical does this do you, as the contributor, have the resources to argue something like this through the courts considering you signed an agreement with Canonical to allow them to do so?

I'd love to see a test case for this something that sets the precedent in favour of the contributor even though they signed an agreement giving Canonical the right to change the license, if you have any links please share them so everyone can see what happened and how the legal system dealt with it.
 
Old 01-22-2014, 02:10 AM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by k3lt01 View Post
Tobi did you see the section ukiuki highlighted? How do you interpret it?

I interpret it as Canonical reserves the right to change the license on anything anyone contributes.
They can't. Only the copyright holders can change the license, but Canonical's CLA is not a copyright assignment, the copyright still belongs to the original author. Section 2.1(a):
Quote:
You retain ownership of the Copyright in Your Contribution and have the same rights to use or license the Contribution which You would have had without entering into the Agreement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by k3lt01
I don't see a discussion about copyright here I see a discussion about licensing software that was initially distributed under one license but Canonical believes it can re-license under another agreement (even proprietary) simply because the contributor signed an agreement allowing them to do so.
The can't relicense anything without asking the copyright holder, the original authors, so this indeed can not be seen without looking at the copyright also. Canonical's CLA is not about relicensing at all, it is about dual licensing and patent grants (section 2.2). As the CLA clearly states (emphasis by me):
Quote:
2.3 Outbound License
Based on the grant of rights in Sections 2.1 and 2.2, if We
include Your Contribution in a Material, We may license the
Contribution under any license, including copyleft,
permissive, commercial, or proprietary licenses. As a
condition on the exercise of this right, We agree to also
license the Contribution under the terms of the license or
licenses which We are using for the Material on the
Submission Date.
Since Canonical uses GPL v3 for initial submissions there must always be a GPL licensed version of your code, they only keep themselves the right to dual license for their own purposes. For a practical example of this, some phone company may decide to release a phone with Ubuntu Touch, but is not very fond of the GPL v3 (not uncommon with phone companies) used for the Mir display server. Such a company can get a (for example) MIT or BSD license instead, since Canonical has the right to dual license, but that changes in no way the original license of the project.

That is what most people get wrong, the Canonical CLA is not about relicensing (this would need a copyright assignment), but about dual-licensing. The fun facr, what most people don't get or don't know, the FSF CLA is one of those that make possible what you describe, since it involves copyright assignment. Yes, when you contribute to an official GNU project you give up your copyright and the FSF can relicense to anything they want.

I recommend to actually read Canonical's CLA and not to rely on interpretations of some bloggers: http://www.canonical.com/static/file...-CLA-ANY-I.pdf

Last edited by TobiSGD; 01-22-2014 at 02:12 AM.
 
Old 01-22-2014, 05:31 AM   #7
k3lt01
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
They can't. Only the copyright holders can change the license, but Canonical's CLA is not a copyright assignment, the copyright still belongs to the original author. Section 2.1(a):
They can and the new agreement says so.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
The can't relicense anything without asking the copyright holder the original authors, so this indeed can not be seen without looking at the copyright also.
Tobi the asking is the agreement, once you have signed it you agree to let them do it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
Canonical's CLA is not about relicensing at all, it is about dual licensing and patent grants (section 2.2). As the CLA clearly states (emphasis by me):
Section 2.3 clearly states (no emphasis required)"based on the grant of rights in Section 2.1 and 2.2 ..... We may license the Contribution under any license including ....." In other words Tobi once you have signed this agreement you give them the right to do this.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
Since Canonical uses GPL v3 for initial submissions there must always be a GPL licensed version of your code, they only keep themselves the right to dual license for their own purposes.
So if you don't have a GPL on it they put it on it (1st re-license). They then decide to put a Proprietary license on it for their own purpose (2nd re-license) and they can do all this because you signed an agreement giving them explicit rights to do so.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
That is what most people get wrong, the Canonical CLA is not about relicensing (this would need a copyright assignment), but about dual-licensing. The fun facr, what most people don't get or don't know, the FSF CLA is one of those that make possible what you describe, since it involves copyright assignment. Yes, when you contribute to an official GNU project you give up your copyright and the FSF can relicense to anything they want.
I have no doubt the FSF does this and guess what if they do in good faith and in clear unambigious terms then so be it. Having said that Canonical doesn't do it in clear unabigious words. They do it with alot of legal double talk. Re-licensing is merely licensing or authorising again, everytime a license is added, modified, or changed the "thing" it is applied to is re-licensed.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
I recommend to actually read Canonical's CLA and not to rely on interpretations of some bloggers: http://www.canonical.com/static/file...-CLA-ANY-I.pdf
I recommend you don't assume people rely on the interpretation of "some bloggers". I also think your usage of the term malicious with regards to "bloggers" is a little over the top. Jeremy asked what our opinions are about CLAs I gave mine and you come in assuming people are "malicious" and that others rely on these "malicious bloggers" for their information. You're entitled to your opinion just as everyone else is entitled to theirs.

I see they have changed their CLA since I last looked at Ubuntu. However, that does not change much at all.

If you read sections 2.3 and 2.4 they say they can change the license (you say they can't but they say they can, and from your words it also appears they can do this regardless of what license is already on the contribution) and then they say that you agree to waive and not assert moral rights against them etc either direct or indirect. You see Tobi the agreement is not only in the sections you quoted, you must take the entire thing in its full context. Sure they say they will do such and such, and they make it appear as though it is in good will, but you also agree to give them full rights (while allegedly keeping your own as well) to do whatever they want to which includes re-licensing (adding another license is re-licensing).

Again, I'd like to see a test case where a precedent is set that favours the contributor and not a company like Canonical. If you have evidence of any such case (and I'm not talking phone companies but rather the little man without millions of dollars and a big legal section in the company to back him up) I'd be interested in reading it.
 
Old 01-22-2014, 06:23 AM   #8
TobiSGD
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Any contribution made to Canonical projects is GPL v3, you agree to use that license when submitting your contribution. That is the license mentioned in the second part of section 2.3:
Quote:
As a
condition on the exercise of this right, We agree to also
license the Contribution under the terms of the license or
licenses which We are using for the Material on the
Submission Date.
So your code will always stay GPL v3 and has to, since that is a condition for the first part of section 2.3. Canonical has the right to additionally release it under a different license, the keyword here is additionally, they specifically state that the license of the submission date (in Canonical's case GPL v3) always stays valid. So they can't re-license the project, they only can dual-license it.
Quote:
So if you don't have a GPL on it they put it on it (1st re-license). They then decide to put a Proprietary license on it for their own purpose (2nd re-license) and they can do all this because you signed an agreement giving them explicit rights to do so.
No, again, there is no relicensing. All code submitted to Canonical projects is submitted under GPL v3, this is no relicensing, this is the first license you as original author have to give the code. If they put a proprietary license on it the original code still has to be under the original license, per condition mentioned in 2.3 second part, otherwise the condition is not met for the additional license that they can apply according to 2.3 first part.

Quote:
I recommend you don't assume people rely on the interpretation of "some bloggers". I also think your usage of the term malicious with regards to "bloggers" is a little over the top. Jeremy asked what our opinions are about CLAs I gave mine and you come in assuming people are "malicious" and that others rely on these "malicious bloggers" for their information. You're entitled to your opinion just as everyone else is entitled to theirs.
Yes, I said malicious and I stand to my word. A lot of bloggers out there would do anything to get more page impressions, just look what happened with all the UEFI/Secure Boot FUD, or when it comes to bashing Canonical. If you bash someone or intentionally post wrong information then I call that malicious.

Quote:
If you read sections 2.3 and 2.4 they say they can change the license (you say they can't but they say they can, and from your words it also appears they can do this regardless of what license is already on the contribution) and then they say that you agree to waive and not assert moral rights against them etc either direct or indirect. You see Tobi the agreement is not only in the sections you quoted, you must take the entire thing in its full context. Sure they say they will do such and such, and they make it appear as though it is in good will, but you also agree to give them full rights (while allegedly keeping your own as well) to do whatever they want to which includes re-licensing (adding another license is re-licensing).
It is clear English, no lawyer language and I will repeat it: Canonical has the right to add an additional license to your code
Quote:
We may license the
Contribution under any license, including copyleft,
permissive, commercial, or proprietary licenses.
but they can do that only under the condition that the original code stays under GPL v3 (which is for Canonical projects always the license at the date of submission)
Quote:
As a
condition on the exercise of this right, We agree to also
license the Contribution under the terms of the license or
licenses which We are using for the Material on the
Submission Date.
In other words, the original code always has the original license, no relicensing is happening. You can still use your code however you want, you can fork the project, no close down is happening and can't happen, because it would violate the condition for the additional license in the first place. Canonical would shoot itself in the foot.
Quote:
Sure they say they will do such and such, and they make it appear as though it is in good will, but you also agree to give them full rights (while allegedly keeping your own as well) to do whatever they want to which includes re-licensing (adding another license is re-licensing).
No, you don't give them full rights, as is specifically stated in the CLA:
Quote:
You retain ownership of the Copyright in Your Contribution and have the same rights to use or license the Contribution which You would have had without entering into the Agreement.
You loose exactly nothing.
 
Old 01-22-2014, 11:38 AM   #9
metaschima
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I think a lawyer is needed to decipher this. If they can re-license code without the owner's permission, then I think it would be illegal.
 
Old 01-22-2014, 05:07 PM   #10
k3lt01
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Tobi what legal school did you study through?

What is your understanding of giving up moral rights?
Once you give up moral rights to something you have no claim to it as a part of that agreement. Yes you can continue with your own material but what you agree to give to them, and give up your moral rights to, they can do anything they want with. So what they use in their projects you have no claim to but you have claim to the same material if you use it in your own projects.

Your explanation of someone placing a GPL license on their contribution is debatable. If I write something that can be useful to an organisation and choose a license other than the GPL3 and then I agree to Canonical's CLA it is Canonical saying the GPL license will be placed on this contribution. They wrote the CLA not the contributor it is therefore Canonical placing the GPL3 on the contribution even though the contributor may have a different license on it. It is Canonical, with the authors permission, re-licensing the contribution.

Again, are you aware of any test cases that set a precedent in support of a contributor in a claim against Canonical?

Last edited by k3lt01; 01-22-2014 at 05:39 PM.
 
Old 01-22-2014, 10:06 PM   #11
TobiSGD
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Quote:
Originally Posted by k3lt01 View Post
Tobi what legal school did you study through?
None, Which was it for you?
Quote:
What is your understanding of giving up moral rights?
Once you give up moral rights to something you have no claim to it as a part of that agreement. Yes you can continue with your own material but what you agree to give to them, and give up your moral rights to, they can do anything they want with. So what they use in their projects you have no claim to but you have claim to the same material if you use it in your own projects.
What have moral rights to do with licenses? How did they come into the discussion? Also, the code you contribute always keeps to be your code, under the license you submitted it with, in case of Canonical projects GPL v3. Do you want to tell me that the GPL is morally wrong?

Quote:
Your explanation of someone placing a GPL license on their contribution is debatable. If I write something that can be useful to an organisation and choose a license other than the GPL3 and then I agree to Canonical's CLA it is Canonical saying the GPL license will be placed on this contribution. They wrote the CLA not the contributor it is therefore Canonical placing the GPL3 on the contribution even though the contributor may have a different license on it. It is Canonical, with the authors permission, re-licensing the contribution.
As the original author you have the right to license your project with the license you wish to use. But that does not apply to projects of someone else. In the same way you could say the the BSD folks are re-licensing your code because it must be compatible with the BSD license if you want to contribute code to one of their projects (so no GPL, for example). Or that you have to relicense your code when it is GPL v3, but you want to contribute it to the Linux kernel, which is GPL v2 only (no "… or later version" term) and therefore incompatible with the GPL v3.
Only that this isn't the case. As the original author you can submit your code under the license necessary for that project, but you can license it to other projects, including your own ones, under any license you want. So again, no relicensing is happening, you can just dual license, there is no need to remove the original license. With signing the CLA you give Canonical exactly the same permission to dual license code, but only under the condition that your code always remains available under GPL v3, otherwise they loose the right to dual-license. Again, no relicensing is happening, since the original license is not removed.

If that is a thing you can live with or not has nothing at all to do with the legal implications of the CLA, that is something that you have to decide for yourself, in the same way as you have to decide if it has moral implications for you to contribute to BSD or MIT licensed projects, where also a third party can use the code in proprietary software without contributing back.
My comments were only aimed at the legal component that so many people get wrong (intentionally or not): No relicensing is happening, your code always stays open and can't be closed down by Canonical.

Last edited by TobiSGD; 01-22-2014 at 10:09 PM.
 
Old 01-22-2014, 10:08 PM   #12
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I found this very interesting, not directly related to the topic but close enough in terms of abuse, very interesting information!

Regards
 
Old 01-22-2014, 11:26 PM   #13
k3lt01
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
None, Which was it for you?
UNE Armidale NSW Australia, you have to have studied a subject at university in order to gain approval to teach it at a High School level in my state.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
What have moral rights to do with licenses? How did they come into the discussion? Also, the code you contribute always keeps to be your code, under the license you submitted it with, in case of Canonical projects GPL v3. Do you want to tell me that the GPL is morally wrong?
Thanks for admitting you haven't read the Harmony agreement in full. The Moral Rights has alot to do with this discussion simply because it is a part of the CLA you either didn't read or you chose to ignore. a What do moral rights have to do with licenses? you ask. If I place a license, any license at all, on something I produced which in effect means that no one can later place a license on it that removes the rights of everyone else to use that product from anywhere they obtain it from placing a license on it (e.g. Proprietary) that removes peoples rights to use it from any source in the way the originator intended then that action is morally wrong. You brought up the GPL as morally wrong, I didn't, so you need to justify that for yourself. My contention is that Canonical's "harmony" agreement that specifically states that the contributor waives and does not assert any moral rights is morally wrong when the license that was originally applied may specifically state that where-ever the product is it is free for everyone to use, modify etc. as long as they pass it on in the same way.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
As the original author you have the right to license your project with the license you wish to use. But that does not apply to projects of someone else. In the same way you could say the the BSD folks are re-licensing your code because it must be compatible with the BSD license if you want to contribute code to one of their projects (so no GPL, for example). Or that you have to relicense your code when it is GPL v3, but you want to contribute it to the Linux kernel, which is GPL v2 only (no "… or later version" term) and therefore incompatible with the GPL v3.
We are not talking about the kernel or BSd we are talking about Canonical's CLA.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
Only that this isn't the case. As the original author you can submit your code under the license necessary for that project, but you can license it to other projects, including your own ones, under any license you want. So again, no relicensing is happening, you can just dual license, there is no need to remove the original license. With signing the CLA you give Canonical exactly the same permission to dual license code, but only under the condition that your code always remains available under GPL v3, otherwise they loose the right to dual-license. Again, no relicensing is happening, since the original license is not removed.
Hogwash. If I produce something and place a license on it that is not GPL and after a while see that it could be used by Canonical and they then place the GPL3 on it that product has been re-licensed. Arguing dual licensing doesn't change the fact that the licensing of that product has been changed in some way (added to in this case). Canonical's starting point is what license they deem is the start of the agreement, i.e. when the product is incorporated into their project, but does not recognise that a license may have already been placed on the product by the original author. They then assert that by agreeing to the Harmony agreement you give them full rights to change the license to any license they want to. That is the problem I have with it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
If that is a thing you can live with or not has nothing at all to do with the legal implications of the CLA, that is something that you have to decide for yourself, in the same way as you have to decide if it has moral implications for you to contribute to BSD or MIT licensed projects, where also a third party can use the code in proprietary software without contributing back.
My original post in this discussion was about my distaste for Canonical and their "agreement" I have no interest in discussing the BSD or MIT because I have had nothing to do with them. Please feel free to continue discussing them with anyone else but they have no relevance to me so I'm not discussing them with you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
My comments were only aimed at the legal component that so many people get wrong (intentionally or not): No relicensing is happening, your code always stays open and can't be closed down by Canonical.
Again you are quite possibly incorrect. The code that is incorporated into Canonicals project can in fact be closed down and the agreement clearly states that you the contributor will not claim moral rights to it. Of course you can work on your code in other places that uphold your original license but that is not the point of this. Once Canonical has your code in their project it is their code in that project.

Again, are you aware of any test cases that set a precedent in support of a contributor in a claim against Canonical? So far it seems you are not and that is why you ignore this and are just going on your beliefs (which is fair enough).
 
Old 01-23-2014, 12:19 AM   #14
TobiSGD
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Quote:
Originally Posted by k3lt01 View Post
UNE Armidale NSW Australia, you have to have studied a subject at university in order to gain approval to teach it at a High School level in my state.
And I guess you specialized in copyright and licensing laws?
Quote:
You brought up the GPL as morally wrong, I didn't, so you need to justify that for yourself.
Please re-read what I have written, I have not brought up anything, I asked you if you think that the GPL is morally wrong.
As I understand it, moral rights are such things like Apple uses ("It is not allowed to use this software for production of weapons of mass distruction"). Those are invalid under GPL anyways, which you have to use to submit to Canonical. If you don't like that then just don't contribute to Canonical. They are not forcing you to anything, so how again can that be morally wrong? I just don't get it.
Quote:
We are not talking about the kernel or BSd we are talking about Canonical's CLA.
So bringing up example that work exactly the same way as Canonical's CLA, but are widely ignored is not allowed?
Quote:
Hogwash. If I produce something and place a license on it that is not GPL and after a while see that it could be used by Canonical and they then place the GPL3 on it that product has been re-licensed.
Nonsense:
1. Relicensing means that you have to remove the old license. This is not mandatory to submit something under a different license, you can simply dual-license.
2. Canonical is not placing the GPL v3 on your code, you do it. To be able to submit to Canonical the code has to be already GPL v3, they are not changing a little bit of the license. If you don't like your code to be GPL licensed just don't submit it.
Quote:
by agreeing to the Harmony agreement you give them full rights to change the license to any license they want to.
They are not changing the license, the license has to be GPL v3 forever, as a condition that they may also distribute the project to some third party using a different license. The original license remains and is not changed.
Quote:
Again you are quite possibly incorrect. The code that is incorporated into Canonicals project can in fact be closed down and the agreement clearly states that you the contributor will not claim moral rights to it. Of course you can work on your code in other places that uphold your original license but that is not the point of this. Once Canonical has your code in their project it is their code in that project.
Sorry, but the CLA clearly states something different. You reamin the copyright holder, it is not their code. They can not close down the code, since it is mandatory that the code remains GPL v3 licensed for them to be allowed to issue additional licenses.

It is a conditional statement:
Code:
if (original code remains GPL)
then 
    Canonical may use other licenses
else
    Canonical looses the ability to dual license
Quote:
Again, are you aware of any test cases that set a precedent in support of a contributor in a claim against Canonical?
No, possibly because Canonical never closed down any code contributed under CLA. All their open source projects are still open source, so for now there never was a need for such a test case.

Last edited by TobiSGD; 01-23-2014 at 12:20 AM.
 
Old 01-23-2014, 03:43 AM   #15
k3lt01
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
And I guess you specialized in copyright and licensing laws?
Not at all that is why I haven't come out with a blanket statement saying they can't do something but have ask for test cases if any have occurred. I am not the person who is saying people discussing this on their own blogs are malicious because they don't understand something.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
Please re-read what I have written, I have not brought up anything, I asked you if you think that the GPL is morally wrong.
Please reread what I have written for the answer to your question.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
As I understand it, moral rights are such things like Apple uses ("It is not allowed to use this software for production of weapons of mass distruction"). Those are invalid under GPL anyways, which you have to use to submit to Canonical. If you don't like that then just don't contribute to Canonical. They are not forcing you to anything, so how again can that be morally wrong? I just don't get it.
As you understand it? So others are not allowed to have a differeing opinion to you without you saying they are malicious then. Ok that's got that sorted. FYI http://www.copyright.com.au/get-info...s/moral-rights

As for "if you don't like it just don't contribute" that is exactly what this is about. I don't like it, I don't contribute, I stated as much in my first post on this matter. It would be nice of you to respect that choice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
So bringing up example that work exactly the same way as Canonical's CLA, but are widely ignored is not allowed?
From the very beginning of my participation in this discussion I have stuck to Canonical's CLA, if you want to diverge from that so be it but please don't expect me to change my opinion because you want to diverge.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
Nonsense:
1. Relicensing means that you have to remove the old license. This is not mandatory to submit something under a different license, you can simply dual-license.
2. Canonical is not placing the GPL v3 on your code, you do it. To be able to submit to Canonical the code has to be already GPL v3, they are not changing a little bit of the license. If you don't like your code to be GPL licensed just don't submit it.
They are not changing the license, the license has to be GPL v3 forever, as a condition that they may also distribute the project to some third party using a different license. The original license remains and is not changed.
1. Wrong, re-licensing is merely licensing or authorising again. Add a new license is licensing again, adding a new license (with new responsibilities over and above or in conflict with) is authorising new or different responsibilities. The old license does not have to be removed in many cases it would be superseded or rendered ineffectual because you have allowed then to do as they wish.
2. Canonical is by virtue of the CLA, if you agree to their terms you allow them to place that license on your work in order for it to be accepted.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
Sorry, but the CLA clearly states something different. You reamin the copyright holder, it is not their code. They can not close down the code, since it is mandatory that the code remains GPL v3 licensed for them to be allowed to issue additional licenses.
I agree that you remain the copyright holder of code you keep to use. The same code in other projects that do not require such agreements are yours. The same code sitting on your laptop, usb flash or whaever is still yours. That is not something I have argued against. However, by virtue of agreeing to their terms allowing them to re-license your contribution your contributions depending on the license applied by them in their project are no longer yours. As soon as a Proprietary license is applied to the code the GPL is out of the window.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
[

It is a conditional statement:
Code:
if (original code remains GPL)
then 
    Canonical may use other licenses
else
    Canonical looses the ability to dual license
The problem here is that they also have a conditional statement saying if you agree to this you will waive, and not enforce, moral rights. If they were so clean in their intentions there would be no need at all for this clause.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
No, possibly because Canonical never closed down any code contributed under CLA. All their open source projects are still open source, so for now there never was a need for such a test case.
Thank you for finally answering a simple question. Basically this means that at this point in time this is legally untested.

We were asked for opinions, I gave mine and have explained it, in some areas more than once, and have not ignored any aspect of the "Harmony" agreement. You have explained yours, I respect your right to it I have never called you malicious or ill informed unlike you who believe others are malicious. However you chose to ignore and then insinuate a part of the agreement that is, in my point of view, a big problem has nothing to do with the discussion. You linked to the agreement, you recommended people read it, you then chose to ignore a section of it and only decided to discuss it after it was pointed out that you haven't even read the full agreement.
 
  


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