CLA is broken (was: Re: packages without internet source in fedora)

[seth vidal]

On Mon, 2008-04-21 at 17:49 +0200, Stepan Kasal wrote:

> I never doubted that this was not the _intention_.
> And I would wish I were wrong.

Well, then you get your wish, you're wrong.

> 
> > However, rather than add one more non-lawyer-opinion into
> > the mix I've asked if we can get a comment from legal about this.
> 
> But the contributor is supposed to sign it, supposedly without
> getting a legal advice.

When did we ever say they should not seek legal advice for signing an
agreement. I'm positive that's NEVER been suggested.


> Couldn't the text be made more human-readable?

I think it is very human readable. Your problems with it are confusing
to me, in fact. I signed this license when I first starting working on
fedora long before I started working for red hat. Nothing in the license
bother me nor a lawyer friend of mine when I consulted him.


> I really hate the system "it does not mean what it seems to mean, you
> would never understand it, just sign it here".


I don't know what YOU think it means but it means exactly what I think
it means.

Let's quote the whole section:

2. Contributor Grant of License. You hereby grant to Red Hat, Inc., on
behalf of the Project, and to recipients of software distributed by the
Project: 

      * (a) a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up,
        royalty free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce,
        prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform,
        sublicense, and distribute your Contribution and such derivative
        works; and, 

See, I think the bit you're missing is that the contributor is not
granting COPYRIGHT, they are granting a copyright LICENSE to red hat.
It doesn't say red hat can relicense - only sublicense.

Seriously, where did you get the idea otherwise?

-sv