Direction of the Ubuntu system docs

[Phil Bull]

Hi Mike,

On Tue, 2010-12-21 at 15:05 -0500, mw crowley wrote:
> There are a number of elements in this agreement that would prevent me
> from joining the effort, namely:
> 5. I will execute any documents and perform any acts that Canonical
> requests from time to time to enable
> Canonical to protect, perfect, enforce or enjoy the rights assigned
> and/or granted to it under this agreement, at
> Canonical's expense
> 
> Why can't the documents just be license creative commons style.
> Canonical can have their logos copyrighted as they see fit,but why
> would anyone sign a legal agreement for a volunteer position?

I think the rationale for getting people to sign the agreement is that
it's easier for Canonical to relicense the work if they fully own the
copyright to it. This is almost certainly targeted at them working with
OEMs, who may not be happy to work under licenses where they are
required to share their modifications to the code/docs. Under the
agreement, Canonical would be able to release the work under a non-free
license, but a freely-licensed version of the (unmodified) work would
always remain available. It would still be CC-licensed, but
non-CC-licensed versions could be released too.

To clarify, we *can* write and release docs for Unity *without* signing
this agreement. They just won't be kept in the Unity package itself.
This could work out fine, but it could have side-effects. For example,
if Canonical wanted to distribute a relicensed Unity with documentation,
they might end up rewriting the documentation themselves. Then our work
will have been wasted.

Thanks,

Phil

-- 
Phil Bull
https://launchpad.net/~philbull
Book - http://nostarch.com/ubuntu4.htm