Re: Copyright arrangements for a web project

Josh Berkus writes ("Re: Copyright arrangements for a web project"):
> [Ian Jackson:]
> > * Should the project give the licence steward the power to change the
> > public licence unilaterally in the future in ways other than just
> > upgrading to newer versions ? I think the answer is probably "yes"
> > because the licensing landscape for web applications isn't settled
> > yet. Is this a good idea and how should it be done ?
>
> Even when the steward is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, such a provision would be
> strongly discouraging to contributors.

Thanks for your opinion.

> > Ideally it would be good to avoid requiring copyright assignment to
> > the licence steward. Can this be achieved by some text in the
> > standard licence rubric eg
>
> SPI has never handled or supported copyright assignment before. We'd
> first need to have a policy meeting to see if we even support the idea
> of copyright assignment, and then see if we have the personnel resources
> to actually handle assignment for a specific project.

SPI has certainly "supported" copyright assignment in the sense that
SPI has a published policy about how it will handle any copyrights
that it acquires:
http://spi-inc.org/corporate/resolutions/1998/1998-11-16.iwj.2/

I agree that the CLA paperwork is annoying and best avoided.

> Personally, I'm not a big fan of copyright assignment, so as a warning
> I'd be arguing against SPI supporting this.

The SPI policy discourages it.

> Also, you can't modify the text of the GPL and still call it the GPL.

I don't understand the relevance of that comment. It's certainly not
anything I was proposing.

Ian.