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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