Direction of the Ubuntu system docs

[Jim Campbell]

Hey Phil,

On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 5:28 PM, Phil Bull <philbull at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Jim,
>
> On Mon, 2010-12-20 at 17:12 -0600, Jim Campbell wrote:
> > Mark has said that the any Unity docs would be able to be released
> > under the same license as the Ubuntu wiki, which is CC-by-SA (v3, I
> > think?), so I don't think that there's an issue there.  At least, it
> > wouldn't be an issue for the foreseable future.
>
> The issue I have isn't the license - it would always be available under
> a Free license, and there's no risk of it going proprietary as-is. My
> problem is the copyright assignment. I don't want to give ownership of
> my work away, I want to remain the owner (and share it liberally). I
> contribute to Ubuntu because I like being *part* of the project, on a
> similar level to everyone else. For me, signing the agreement would feel
> like becoming what is essentially an unpaid subcontractor to Canonical.
>
> Others will surely disagree, and will have no reservations about the
> agreement.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Phil
>
>
I totally agree, and your points are well-made.

As for my email, it just seemed to me that there was question about the
license of the docs & how the Unity contributor agreement + license may
interact with it, so I thought, "Hey, maybe I can help to clear that up a
little bit."  : ).

I didn't go into detail on my views regarding the matter because (frankly)
other people contribute more to Ubuntu docs (proper) than I do.  That's
pretty clear. So I thought I'd leave the contributor-agreement discussion to
the people who are more impacted by it - You, Connor, Matthew, Milo . . .
whoever else has been contributing lots of docs to the official Ubuntu
docs.

As a member of the project-at-large, I think the agreement thing is pretty
sucky, and I can totally understand the "unpaid contractor," feeling that
you describe.  Perhaps I was trying too hard to be polite, but It's not that
I don't have strong feelings on the topic, it's that I don't think my
feelings are relevant to the situation that the Ubuntu doc-contributors
face. "Book 'Em Danno" and I (and whoever else wants to contribute to
Xubuntu docs) don't have to concern ourselves with this issue, even if it
does sadden me to see the rift it creates.

Plus, you had already provided some great links to help clear things up.  :
)  (Really, who knew that there were so many projects that required signing
the contributor agreement before you could contribute your own code?  I
thought that it was only 4 or 5 projects.)

Jim
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/attachments/20101220/1be8b225/attachment.html>