Anyone care to explain how Canonical requiring copyright assignment for contributions to their projects is different from Red Hat requiring a Contributor License Agreement for contributions to Spacewalk, their now-open-source Red Hat Network code-base?
At first glance it seems that Canonical ask for copyright assignment and then 'grant a very broad license back', while Red Hat let the contributor retain copyright but ask for a similarly broad license for their use of the contribution. Other than the name in the copyright statement, it's difficult to see there's much difference in the control over downstream use of the contributed code, and it's potential for downstream (mis-)use that the original article seems to be primarily concerned about.
Yes, the disparity between the contributor agreements is confusing and requires potential contributors to put their legal head on to work out what they're agreeing to for each project they want to contribute to. That's where the free-software/open-source licenses were a few years ago before efforts were made to catalogue them and reduce their number somewhat (largely by The Open Source Initiative, I seem to remember). And that seems to be the problem that Project Harmony is trying to tackle.
So, are there real differences between these two instances? I'm having trouble spotting the objective difference between 'This set of policies has some flaws' in one case and 'copyright assignment intimidation tactics' in the other.
@rfontana, You should updated the SpaceWalk wiki to be clear. It still links to the old CLA. See: https://fedorahosted.org/spacewalk/wiki/PatchProcess I am glad you changed the process, I'm going to update this.
At first glance it seems that Canonical ask for copyright assignment and then 'grant a very broad license back', while Red Hat let the contributor retain copyright but ask for a similarly broad license for their use of the contribution. Other than the name in the copyright statement, it's difficult to see there's much difference in the control over downstream use of the contributed code, and it's potential for downstream (mis-)use that the original article seems to be primarily concerned about.
Yes, the disparity between the contributor agreements is confusing and requires potential contributors to put their legal head on to work out what they're agreeing to for each project they want to contribute to. That's where the free-software/open-source licenses were a few years ago before efforts were made to catalogue them and reduce their number somewhat (largely by The Open Source Initiative, I seem to remember). And that seems to be the problem that Project Harmony is trying to tackle.
So, are there real differences between these two instances? I'm having trouble spotting the objective difference between 'This set of policies has some flaws' in one case and 'copyright assignment intimidation tactics' in the other.