Contribution agreements (Re: [sldev] What is the point of firstlook and giving feedback to LL)

[Justin Ryan]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 9:57 PM, Rob Lanphier <robla at lindenlab.com> wrote:

>
>  Our contribution agreement is a joint copyright assignment, so the original
> author retains full rights of authorship, and can ensure that the
> modifications remain freely available.
>

That is much better than the Plone Foundation, and I commend you for
it, but I still think you're inviting trouble unless you can prove
that these contributors have never worked on or studied GPL code that
is not dual licensed under BSD, MIT, X11, or similar.

IMO these sort of agreements laugh in the face of Free Software.  Why
do you deserve to privately license features jointly developed and
initially paid for by your general customers?  This is an unnatural
assertion which can only stem from one of:

 * LL are planning something that you don't want to fully explain
because it may limit interest in signing the contributor agreement.
 * LL are simply afraid of giving up control

>From the perspective of someone whom has done Free Software PR for a
good half of his life, the likelihood is the latter, but will cast
aspersions toward the former.

We all choose our own fate, LL. ;)

-- 
Justin Alan Ryan
Independent Interaction Architect
http://www.bitmonk.net/
* : +1-415-226-1199

"I never meant to hurt anyone,
 or help anyone.."
 -Bender