[Owncloud] github and contributor agreement

[Frank Karlitschek]

On 24.08.2012, at 23:54, Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org> wrote:

> 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.

Thanks. We want to be as transparent as possible.


> 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.

This are all valid. points. We will check it there are ways to improve this.
I will get back to you as soon as possible.



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

Thanks. Will fix it.



Frank