On Friday 17 of October 2014 08:20:42 Timothy Pearson wrote:
On Thursday 16 of October 2014 19:16:32 Timothy Pearson wrote:
All,
After much consideration I have decided it would be safest to require our developers to formalize their open-source contributions with a CLA.
The CLA on the main TDE site does not transfer copyright or do anything objectionable like Canonical's old CLA did; it simply formalizes the long-standing intuitive agreement between open-source contributors and open-source projects. Specifically, contributors grant a license to use, redistribute, modify, etc. the contributed work under our approved open-source licenses (sadly this formalization is required even though most people would think contributing to an open source project automatically granted those rights!), waive any patent rights they may otherwise hold for the contribution (some people contribute then sue for high damages), etc. Fairly standard stuff but in the increasingly litigious environment of the United States the risks are just too high to continue without a CLA.
I have not arrived at this decision lightly, but have tried to keep the CLA as minimal as possible while protecting the project. I don't believe the CLA grants any further rights to the project than already intuitively granted when people contribute to an open source project; if I am in error please let me know ASAP!
Until I get feedback from the core team this is not mandatory for anyone who has already contributed to the project. Above all I do not want to alienate the core development team without whom this project would not be possible.
The agreements (and rationale) are available here: https://www.trinitydesktop.org/cla/
Thank you for your consideration,
Timothy Pearson Trinity Desktop Project
Some technical questions:
- It would be useful to either pre-fill 'Us' or add instructions how it
should be filled.
Good catch. I had wanted to use the PDFs generated on the Harmony site to avoid any potential introduction of errors, but that doesn't appear to be an option. I have *carefully* regenerated the PDFs from the Harmony templates and prefilled the "Us" fields, as well as added editable fields for the contributor section.
- Remember that the contributors can be from all over the world, and it
would be good to specify the fax number including international callsign - ie: +1 (415) 639-6630.
Whoops! I do business internationally and therefore religiously tack on the "+1" prefix; not sure how I managed to leave it off that page.
- If sending by email procedure should be what? Print, fill in
informations 'You', be signed, scanned and sent as images? It would be good instructions also add to the web page.
As there is now fillable field support I think it is a bit more obvious what is intended? Either way is fine, though if it's signed on paper then scanned there is no need for a digital signature and vice versa.
I have also generated GPG digital signatures for the two PDFs on the site; these constitute my signing of the agreements the same way as if someone else had sent in a digital signature for a CLA via Email.
I could use some help from David Rankin if he's on the list to make sure I have done this all correctly, but at least this is a good start.
Thanks all for your input!
Tim
Great, it looks good. Now I have yet to find a pdf viewer that support form fields, because usually I have installed only kpdf :)