11 June 2009, 16:07

Hi Gavin,
No, there's been no consideration of a change in license, and that hasn't been the driver for a copyright policy to come up in the Governance Group discussions. There was some exploration of the pros and cons of Affero GPL but that is an aside to this discussion.  

cheers
Richard

11 June 2009, 9:24

Hi,

nothing new to say. Just my +1 for CLA  (better and easier for contributor + protection and anti-fud for the Community). 

 Ciao :-) 

11 June 2009, 10:30

Well, even I can imagine the world without these agreements, if you really insist on having one, my +1 for CLA.

To paraphrase the known Linus' quote, I would say CLA is like a condom. It is better without it but it is safe to wear it if you do not know who you sleep with.

11 June 2009, 11:09

I'm no expert on legal matters or licensing more generally. I understand and am comfortable with the CLA option and don't think I'd need to spend time an money on that. Its also easy for us, as a Mahara partner, to sell on the idea to our customers who are funding work which we and they would like to see in the public domain.

I can see that there would be circumstances where the CAA option might give more strength in defending Mahara against abuse, but I would also be concerned that it also might be more open to abuse by those managing the project (I'm not suggesting this is likely). I'd feel less happy about this option without consulting lawyers and given the international dimension it would be time consuming and costly. I feel that we'd be protecting against one or two scenarios rather than offering broad protection.

Overall I would vote for simplicity and go for the CLA option.

 Mick.

18 June 2009, 18:44

Hi,
Thank-you to everyone for contributing to this discussion. We haven't worked out the finer details yet but will be proceeding with a CLA type of approach and ensuring project contributors are clearly acknowledged.

cheers
Richard

24 August 2009, 18:20

Hi everyone,

We have now come up with a draft contributor policy, which you can read here:  http://wiki.mahara.org/Developer_Area/Contributing_Code

This is similar to the policy for the Linux kernel, with an extra clause added at the suggestion of Rochelle Hume of Paxton-Pennman Et Al.

Please let us know what you think about it. We shall wait a week for community feedback before finalising the policy.