Direction of the Ubuntu system docs

[mw crowley]

Phil,
Thanks for taking the time to address this.
I fully understand Canonical's aspiration to gain wider acceptance for
OEMs.  I imagine this is a response to MS FUD over open source
licensing, as they try to gain wider acceptance.  I'm not at all
comfortable with an agreement that requires me to "execute any
documents and perform any acts that Canonical requests."   Whether
this is at Canonical's expense, or for Canonical's protection, I
wouldn't touch that agreement with a ten foot pole, and neither should
anyone else who isn't being compensated for their work.  Any agreement
that requires action after submitting work needs to explicitly define
compensation.
I get where Canonical's coming from, and I get what they're trying to
achieve, and I wouldn't have any problem volunteering my time to
further their cause, but I couldn't support that agreement.

Why wouldn't a cc or gpl license be enough for documentation?
Cheers,
Mike


On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Phil Bull <philbull at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>
>



-- 
crowleymw at gmail.com