[Insight-developers] Should Open Source Communities Avoid Contributor Agreements? (by Simon Phipps)

[Luis Ibanez]

http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/08/on-contributor-agreements/index.htm

<quote>


Exceptions

There can be justifications for having copyright aggregation by and for a
community. When the beneficiary of the aggregated copyright is the community
itself (in the case of a community hosted by a non-profit Foundation), there
are benefits available that may outweigh the disadvantages. These include
giving the Foundation the legal right to enforce the copyright in certain
jurisdictions, and the freedom to update the open source licence later. They
may also include the granting of additional rights such as patent licences
in the case where the open source licence does not adequately deal with
patents, or to help in countries where copyright law is sufficiently
different from US law that the US-centric concepts behind open source fail.
Richard Fontana covered these well in his LinuxCon
presentation<http://ref.fedorapeople.org/fontana-linuxcon.html>
.

Even with these benefits available, there are many communities that choose
not to aggregate their copyrights - notably the Linux kernel, GNOME, Apache
and Mozilla communities. The recent
policy<http://live.gnome.org/CopyrightAssignment>and
guidelines <http://live.gnome.org/CopyrightAssignment/Guidelines> on
copyright assignment by the GNOME Foundations are especially worth reading.
Having diverse copyright ownership leads to a deeper mutual trust and an
assurance that the playing-field remains level. Insisting on copyright
aggregation is one of the more certain ways a company can ensure the open
source community it is seeding remains small and lacking co-developers. With
the rise of "value add" business models such as Apache-based open core or
service subscriptions, it is less necessary for the businesses involved to
aggregate copyright.


How to Flourish

It may well be advisable to have a participant agreement for your community,
to ensure that everyone has the same understanding of and commitment to the
project if they are sharing its evolution. But if you want your community to
flourish, eschew aggregated copyrights, or vest them in a non-profit entity
representative of and open to the community. In fact, avoid
*any*institutional inequality and focused control. Communities should
be
open-by-rule.

In my experience,  attempting to retain control of a project you're starting
or hosting leads to mistrust, contention and a rules-based focus that
diminishes your reputation. Relaxing control will lead to the community
innovating and growing in ways you've not anticipated, as well as enhancing
your reputation. As I've frequently said (although less frequently been
heeded): trade control for influence, because in a meshed society control
gets marginalised while influence delivers success.

</quote>

Full Article at
http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/08/on-contributor-agreements/index.htm

----

Simon Phipps
is a board member of Open Source for
America<http://www.opensourceforamerica.org/>and the Open
Source Initiative
<http://www.opensource.org/>.[4]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Phipps_%28programmer%29#cite_note-3>
[5] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Phipps_%28programmer%29#cite_note-4>He
has served on a number of advisory boards for other projects,
including
the GNOME Foundation,[6]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Phipps_%28programmer%29#cite_note-5>OpenSolaris,
[7] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Phipps_%28programmer%29#cite_note-6>OpenJDK,
[8] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Phipps_%28programmer%29#cite_note-7>and
OpenSPARC.
[9] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Phipps_%28programmer%29#cite_note-8>
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