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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 11/01/19 11:19, Elmar Stellnberger
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:d74c7768-9537-8122-d678-9ab4bf925d34@elstel.org">
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">The offending point is that it's the
Original Authors, not the copyright holders, those who have the
power to authorize relicensing and adding new Original Authors
(I suppose all of them jointly, or perhaps based on a majority
vote, and in case, how do you calculate the majority? Per
capita? Per share?)
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
all of them jointly.
<br>
<br>
It is the original authors who are copyright holders. As already
documented before I believe it to be the most just solution. It
allows a small team of developers to act like a big firm which
employs a contributor license agreement. Who of you has ever
complaint about contributor license agreements? Why do you not
complain about Apple taking the FreeBSD kernel and exploiting it
for its own profit without giving anything back to the open source
community?
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<p>Wrong, and now I am personally getting frustrated by the lack of
understanding of the problem, which should be apparent by abundant
explanation offered by valuable and respected copyright experts
and by myself too.<br>
</p>
<p>The original authors are copyright holders as much as the
contributors to the project OR those who fork. No discussion about
it.</p>
<p># Ho CAA work with open source projects<br>
</p>
<p>No license whatsoever imposes anybody to accept external
contributions. But an open source license MUST allow third parties
to fork and extend the project. Those who have forked can only use
the software according to the public license. Therefore, it is up
to the original copyright holders whether to grant the right to
relicense BUT they cannot claim relicensing rights on the
contributions they receive. <br>
</p>
<p>If they want to receive this right on third parties'
contributions they only have two options: either they only accept
no copyleft contributions and/or require copyright to be assigned.
<br>
</p>
<p>This a fair deal. Third parties know the rules and can decide
whether to contribute the code or not. This does not impair their
right to exploit the four freedoms in any way. If they don't take
the deal, they lose the option to have their changes incorporated
upstream.</p>
<p>In the above scenario those who do not want to contribute under
the original copyright holders term, simply fork the project and
start off a new one. This way the original holders must only merge
changes from the fork under the terms allowed by the forker. They
are in the same position WRT the changes as the original holders
are WRT the original set of code.</p>
<p># How is this license different? <br>
</p>
<p>The proposed license, conversely, allows the original holders to
take and merge the changes from the forked site, embed them in
their work and relicense the derivative work so obtained. The
forker does not receive a symmetrical right over the code made by
the original holders. The original holders are those who can vote
out any relicensing. This is discriminatory. It creates TWO
classes of copyright holders. <br>
</p>
<p>This is totally disingenuous, as it is disingenuous claiming that
this is no different from asking assignment of he copyright. No!
Copyright assignment is a condition to contribute the code
upstream, not a condition to use the code under FOSS licensing. If
I refuse to to contribute the code upstream because o those
conditions, I can just set up my own project and fork from it. The
original holders would have rights only based on the license
(copyleft). <br>
</p>
<p>The propsed license, however, allows the original holders to
force assignment (by an reserving an equivalent right). There is a
HUGE difference. The same difference between an option and an
obligation to contract.<br>
</p>
<p># THERE IS MORE!</p>
<p>Under Section 5.1<br>
</p>
<p>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>f) You must make available to the public any Derivative Work or changes to the Work within one month from their creation. </pre>
</blockquote>
</p>
<p>This creates another huge asymmetry. <br>
</p>
<p>Under copyright law, I can decide whether or not to publish the
code i contribute. Under the porposed license, it is required that
this right is waived as a condition to use the copyright. I think
this is unprecedented. I might be making changes that I don't want
to release to the public neither in object code, because they are
buggy, because I don't want to take responsibility if anybody uses
them. In this case, if I fork the project I have NO WAY TO AVOID
PROVIDING IT UPSTREAM. <br>
</p>
<p>This is APPROPRIATION plain and simple. So any changes I make,
whether or not released to the public, are contributed with an
equivalent of an assignment, granting rights over the derivative
code, including the copyright of the developer, which are not
available to the developer and there is no way to avoid it.</p>
<p># How the license can be changed</p>
<p>There is ONLY one way to preserve this license as something that
might be tentatively compliant. That is, embed the CAA in the
license, so that any contribution to the original project is
automatically under the relicensing condition. BUT any changes,
whether or not contributed to a public forked project are not
assigned, they are not under the relicensing condition. And the
authors of the forked project have the right to claim they are
original author and have the same rights if their project becomes
successful and attracts contributions, otherwise the
discrimination still stands.</p>
<p>I expected something in this direction with the new license,
conversely I only see stubborn rewording that makes it more hard
to lay persons to spot how the license in practice work. This is
not going to succeed, I submit.<br>
</p>
<p>With best regards,</p>
<p>Carlo<br>
</p>
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