Contributor agreement (was Re: what I did on my patch-pilot week)

[John Arbash Meinel]

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John Szakmeister wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 4:45 AM, Robert Collins
> <robertc at robertcollins.net> wrote:
> [snip]
>> A few folk had no contributor agreement, and I couldn't initially add
>> people myself, nor could Martin delegate that access; we tweaked the
>> team arrangement as a result, and now there is a team of folk that can
>> add new people to the contributor agreement team. That team will need to
>> be Canonical staff only AFAIK. To avoid this becoming an issue I suggest
>> that pilots who are not staff pick someone (e.g.  Martin) and mail them
>> when they need to have someone sign the agreement. So first check the
>> persons team memberships
>> (https://edge.launchpad.net/~USERNAME/+participation), If they are not
>> in https://edge.launchpad.net/~contributor-agreement-canonical, then you
>> need to ask them to sign the agreement. In the merge proposal you would
>> write:
>> "You do not appear to have signed the Canonical contributor form
>> (http://www.canonical.com/contributors). Could you please follow the
>> instructions there and copy both martin.pool at canonical.com and myself
>> when you send it in."
>> Then, when the contributor mails you, you can ping Martin to get them
>> added.
> 
> So, I've avoided signing this agreement, because it's unclear to me
> what my rights are in this agreement.  It seems like I can do almost
> anything with my contributions, but I'm not sure what the extent is.
> For instance, can I take modified portions of my contribution and
> chose not to distribute the source for them?  Can I re-license it, and
> use something similar in a different project which may fall under a
> different license?  1. seems to indicate that I no longer own the
> copyright to code I contribute, but then goes on to say that "I grant
> ... perpetual license to use, ...".  That's just confusing to me.
> 
> I don't want to start a long thread about this... I'd rather someone
> point me somewhere that more clearly informs me of what my rights are
> upon signing the agreement.  Any chance there is such a page
> somewhere?  Is there a better forum to get answers to these questions?
> 
> -John
> 
> 

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

If that helps.

John
=:->

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