Policy issues
Owen Winkler
Let's limit the extras plugin to ASL-licensed projects only. Authors of
themes and plugins will have two options: 1) Retain their authorship
and copyright with the knowledge that anyone with access to the extras
repo can modify their work under the license, and also add themselves to
the copyright (using a technical method yet to be coded). 2) Attribute
the plugin or theme to the community and in doing so explicitly give up
their copyright on the work under the same ASL provisions. The only
appropriate place for copyright attribution is in the theme metadata
(theme.xml) or in the plugin metadata (the info function) for plugins
and themes submitted to the extras repo. We should note that themes
that use pre-coded affiliate links or self-links in the public site
(whether you can turn them off or not) should not be submitted, and if
they are, they will most likely be edited to remove those links under
the above terms of use for the repository. These are the conditions for
using the extras repository only, not for pluggables in general.
I would also like to start a conversation about a support forum. There
are people who want to help in that regard, and there is a slowly
growing number of people coming into the project that would seem to
benefit from a low-impact forum, with all of the features that forums
typically provide, as opposed to the users mailing list. I would like
to conclude this conversation with what software we'd use for the forum,
or what we're going to do instead if decide not to setup a forum so that
we can have something to act on.
As more people become interested and participate, it will be difficult
to make changes to these items, so I think that addressing them as soon
as possible will be of benefit.
Owen
Sean T Evans
Hash: SHA1
Owen Winkler wrote:
> I have a couple of policy issues to start a conversation about:
>
> Let's limit the extras plugin to ASL-licensed projects only. Authors of
> themes and plugins will have two options: 1) Retain their authorship
> and copyright with the knowledge that anyone with access to the extras
> repo can modify their work under the license, and also add themselves to
> the copyright (using a technical method yet to be coded). 2) Attribute
> the plugin or theme to the community and in doing so explicitly give up
> their copyright on the work under the same ASL provisions. The only
> appropriate place for copyright attribution is in the theme metadata
> (theme.xml) or in the plugin metadata (the info function) for plugins
> and themes submitted to the extras repo. We should note that themes
> that use pre-coded affiliate links or self-links in the public site
> (whether you can turn them off or not) should not be submitted, and if
> they are, they will most likely be edited to remove those links under
> the above terms of use for the repository. These are the conditions for
> using the extras repository only, not for pluggables in general.
Perhaps it would make sense to have a separate -extras (for third-party
"owned") and -contrib (for donated). This would make it easy for users
to see, at glance, the difference between the two. This may make it
possible to actually separate -extras into multiple branches to allow
other licenses, which would give us the ability to have a central
location to include ports from OBT themes and plugins that are GPL (or
other OSS Licenses). We would have to make it very clear that the
- -extras branch is simply _hosted_ by Habari, not "supported" by Habari.
Then -contrib branch would require only ASL licensed add-ons, and
perhaps would require an agreement such as the
http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt Individual Contributor License
Agreement. Additionally, a standard NOTICE file for -contrib
contributions would be worth exploring. Obviously, I'm not a lawyer, but
I think keeping this separation would be wise from a liability
standpoint if there are any questions regarding copyright.
I think, in general, we've reached a level of stability that formalizing
some of our policies is warranted, and we're rapidly reaching a level of
interest that we'll need to be sure we're all on the same page in
responding to questions of policy.
>
> I would also like to start a conversation about a support forum. There
> are people who want to help in that regard, and there is a slowly
> growing number of people coming into the project that would seem to
> benefit from a low-impact forum, with all of the features that forums
> typically provide, as opposed to the users mailing list. I would like
> to conclude this conversation with what software we'd use for the forum,
> or what we're going to do instead if decide not to setup a forum so that
> we can have something to act on.
>
> As more people become interested and participate, it will be difficult
> to make changes to these items, so I think that addressing them as soon
> as possible will be of benefit.
I'm +1 on getting a forum into place. I'd suggest that we're best off
going with a forum software that A)can integrate with our existing HP.o
logins B) is software that we, as a community, are familiar with. We're
trying to create a blogging app, not learning new software from scratch.
- --
Sean T. Evans
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Scott Merrill
I'm not opposed to providing hosting space only for ASL licensed
thingies, so long as the ultimate plugin/theme mechansim on hp.o fully
supports all licenses. It would be nice to be able to see a list of
all plugins that use a specific license, for example.
> I would also like to start a conversation about a support forum.
I've previously gone on record with a +1 for a support forum now that
we're gaining a larger user base. We need to ensure that we have
dedicated moderators and administrators, though, to purge spam and
make sure messages are filed in the appropriate topics.
This will require some very clear documentation on what is expected of
forum moderators and how one gains that privilege; what a user's
grievance process is if one suspects moderator abuse; etc.
Cheers,
Scott