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Am Freitag, 17. Oktober 2014 schrieb Timothy Pearson:
While I understand fully what you are saying, in
all honesty I am not
concerned about problems from contributors outside of the USA/UK. I
think
most of the free world understands what contributing to open source
means;
it's just our two countries (and maybe one or two others, not sure)
where
people seem to want to have their cake and eat it too.
This whole CLA thing kicked off many months ago because I have someone
who
lives in the USA and works for a USA-based engineering firm; basically
in
this situation the person's employer de facto owns all works created by
the employee even in their off time unless the company explicitly
releases
those rights. Previously we had no mechanism by which the employee
could
ask the company to do that, and therefore no way for that person to ever
contribute to TDE; now we have a mechanism in place.
Tim
I'd call this kind of contract slavery.
As would I, however it's the norm rather than the exception over here. I
wish we would start adopting some of your laws on work and privacy, but
that is never going to happen; this country outsourced most of its
technology manufacturing long ago and seems to have put a death grip on
its (rapidly fading) intellectual property as a result.
Anyway, I'd go for a shorter license agreement.
Something in the kind of
"I, the contributor, own all rights of my contribution. I hold the project
harmless against any third-party claims" (don't know if that's the correct
term, in german it's "schad und klaglos halten").
- From what I understand under our laws that wouldn't be sufficient. The
legal rights holder would win with no recourse on my part even if the
original author signed that.
My kindergarten-level German is a bit strained here (not sure exactly what
"klaglos" means in this context) but I think it translates most closely as
"waive all rights and damages"?
As far as my experience with lawyers goes, these kind
of folk hate simple
terms. Judges on the other hand love simple terms.
I tried to pick the least-complicated CLA I could find that would still
hold up under USA/UK law. If David Rankin is around perhaps he could shed
some light on whether I am being too careful or not careful enough?
Thanks for your input!
Tim
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