[Owncloud] github and contributor agreement

[Cornelius Schumacher]

On Monday 20 August 2012 17:52:38 Frank Karlitschek wrote:
> If someone has question please ask me :-)
> 
> The agreement is here:
> http://owncloud.org/documents/contributor-agreement.pdf The FAQ is here:
> http://owncloud.org/documents/contributor-agreement-faq.pdf

Thanks for publishing this. I think getting clarity about the terms of 
contribution is an essential factor for any open source project.

I have a couple of questions:

* The agreement defines a contribution as anything which is contributed to 
projects maintained or managed by ownCloud Inc. This seems to be very broad 
and not limited to the core repository. How is this limitation to the core put 
into effect?

* The definition of contribution is not limited to source code, but also 
includes anything else, which is contributed via any communication channel. 
Does that mean that for example an email sent to the mailing list is also 
considered a contribution and covered by the agreement?

* The agreement says that the entire right on the contributions including all 
rights under copyright is transferred to ownCloud Inc. Transfer means the 
contributor gives up the right and gives it to ownCloud Inc., right? Does that 
mean the contributor doesn't have the right anymore to for example license the 
contributed code to another company under a different license?

* The FAQ mentions the KDE Free Qt agreement as similar. One essential 
difference is that the KDE Free Qt agreement forces Qt to be released under a 
BSD license, if it's not maintained anymore by its owner. The benefit of this 
is that another company could build up the same business model based on dual-
licensing as a successor, even if the original owner doesn't want or care 
anymore. This wouldn't be possible with ownCloud, right? In the (hopefully 
unlikely) case that onwCloud Inc. goes crazy or vanishes, the community will 
have the ownCloud code released under AGPL, but no other right (e.g. the right 
of the BSD license to incorporate the code in proprietary products without 
releasing the source code).

* The FAQ also mentions HPCC Systems' Open Source Covenant as similar. Here 
also is an essential difference from the ownCloud agreement in that it 
guarantees that the open source project is maintained for at least three years 
after the contribution or it is donated to the community under a permissive 
open source license like MIT. This makes sure (like the KDE Free Qt agreement) 
that there is continued maintenance of the open source project as part of the 
proprietary activities based on the project. How is this made sure with 
ownCloud? The community pledge only mentions releasing the contribution under 
AGPL, but nothing about maintaining it as open source code for the future.

By the way, there is a typo in the first sentence of the agreement. It says 
Ownloud there, not Owncloud.

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org>