Valuable resource CPF gives OSS: lawyers

[Daniel Cazzulino]

As an OSS developer myself, I couldn't care less about technical legalities (even if I am actually a lawyer) that typically concern big companies.
I don't care about my project's IP and copyrights.

I just want to develop cool, useful stuff for others to leverage/redist/enhance/whatever. If CPF can free prospective corporate users from those concerns (however FUD or not, I don't really care) by providing a legal shield for them (and me), then that's good enough for me to gladly embrace it.

OSS is a lot about broader adoption. As a developer, the coolest project in the world is a failure if nobody uses it.
CPF can remove more barriers (again, artificial or not, doesn't matter).

As long as it's OSS-licensed, not even giving my IP/copyright to CPF can take the source out of the cloud, so why should I care?


/kzu

--
Daniel Cazzulino | Developer Lead | XML MVP | Clarius Consulting | +1 425.329.3471

[Fabio Maulo]

btw "legal support" is only one face of the coin... perhaps the most expensive but only one face.

With far less money CPF can support the other face: resources for developers.

MSDN, CommunityServer, servers (hard devices for CS, CI and so on), and some others development resources; probably all can be obtained for free by an organization as CPF.

2009/9/30 Daniel Cazzulino <dan...@cazzulino.com>

--
Fabio Maulo

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 12:39 AM, Fabio Maulo <fabio...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> With far less money CPF can support the other face: resources for
> developers.

I thought the point of CPF was improving communication and
interaction, not direct support of the open communities and their
participants..?
--
Ken Coar
OSS developer, opinionist, author, and sanagendamgagwedweinini

[Fabio Maulo]

do you mean that CPF is building a bridge ending over the water ?

The bridge should have two end points : business companies in one side and OSS in the other side.

If the point will be only "help business to adopt OSS" the bridge will end over the water.

2009/9/30 Rodent of Unusual Size <fuma...@gmail.com>

--
Fabio Maulo

[JP Toto]

Daniel,

Respectfully, I disagree with what you're saying here. I think you do (or should) care about the technical legalities of your OSS project. If you're at all concerned about people, projects, or companies using your software, don't you care that it is licensed in such a way that would make it easy for them to use? Otherwise why would you publish it to begin with?

You seem to contradict yourself in your later paragraphs:

"OSS is a lot about broader adoption. As a developer, the coolest project in the world is a failure if nobody uses it."

Well, by this statement, then you SHOULD care about the legal technicalities, yes?

I'm not trying to give you a hard time but these issues are seldom black and white. I think too few developers give much thought to licensing when they probably should. If somebody co-opts your code and uses it in a closed source project then you will start to care about the "technical legalities" very quickly I would think.

--
JP Toto   |   james....@gmail.com

] Business: http://www.cognisit.com
] Personal: http://www.viceclown.com  |  http://twitter.com/jptoto
] Projects: http://www.barcampphilly.org  |  http://phillyalt.net

"To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion."

[John Petersen]

Hi Daniel..

I'm a lawyer as well. and a developer..but I don't take as dark a view of CPF as you do...at least as it pertains to lawyers. By the way, big fan of Moq.

Speaking of Moq, if you didn't care at about IP and copyrights, then why mandate the BSD license at all?  What if somebody countermanded those restrictions (as few as there are)? You would care...right?

I think more of the focus re: CPF is about (or at least should be about) is putting more of a business model around OSS. And yes, one of the services CPF should offer are legal-related services.

< JVP />

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 12:06 AM, Daniel Cazzulino <dan...@cazzulino.com> wrote:

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Fabio Maulo <fabio...@gmail.com> wrote:
> do you mean that CPF is building a bridge ending over the water ?

Not at all.

> The bridge should have two end points : business companies in one side and
> OSS in the other side.

D'accord.

However, I was under the impression that the support was more for the
benefit of communities than individuals, and more intangible than
otherwise. Please pardon me if I got it wrong..

[Daniel Cazzulino]

The point, which probably got lost in my bad english, is that I don't want to be responsible for figuring out the legalities.
I do care as it has to do with adoption, and today, unfortunately, it's me who has to "study" licensing, etc.

I don't want to. I just want to write the cool code. If somebody else will offload that work from me, that's awesome!

/kzu

--
Daniel Cazzulino | Developer Lead | XML MVP | Clarius Consulting | +1 425.329.3471

[JP Toto]

Heh. Now I see :-) That makes more sense.

[Fabio Maulo]

What mean "support OSS communities" without support individuals working in a OSS project ?

Giving a server to host a ContinuousIntegration soft is a benefit for the OSS individuals developers or for the community ?

If an OSS developer is working for free, give him a license of VisualStudio (at least professional) is a benefit for the individual developer or for the community ?

Giving a server to host the OSS project site is a benefit for the for the individual developer or for the community ?

These things are so futile...

IMO, a foundation should say: "do you want give your contribute to an OSS prj for free? ok don't worry!! we will give you all you need to work in it (from legal to resources), until you will work in it, and you must give us the copyright of your production. Your only worry will be produce a good software."

2009/9/30 Rodent of Unusual Size <fuma...@gmail.com>

--
Fabio Maulo

[John Petersen]

Those are good points...and those are the kinds of services CPF should provide. Developers should not have to worry as much about the business/legal end of things.

< JVP/>

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 12:15 PM, Daniel Cazzulino <k...@clariusconsulting.net> wrote:

--
< JVP/>
johnvpetersen.com
twitter.com/johnvpetersen

[davidc]

Another service that would be nice is some sort of certificate
program. Something for SSL and also for signing their code.

Sure a person can be their own CA and sign their own certs, but if
something like a CPF CA was shipped with IE that developers could work
under it would be very nice. Is something like that possible?

Just a thought

As for the IP and copyright stuff I think the developer/s should have
some participation and some say in the direction a project goes.
Whether it be a soft approach, a sideline approach, or heavily active
there should be a plethora of options that can be molded around the
project. I tend to be doom and gloom about that side of the coin but
there is another perspective to that also. It would strengthen
respect and mutual trust between all involved. It's not like we are
talking a Treaty negotiation just something that covers the bases and
gives everyone a warm fuzzy feeling. Bridging a river of knowledge is
much different than bridging a line in the sand someone put there as a
border. I for one want to walk back and forth on the bridge and watch
the creativity flow. I'd gladly put my sailboat in with everyone
else's. It looks like CPF is already global so the borders are are
fading.

Narrow lines are for narrow minds...Creative minds can't be
contained :)

[Jeff Brown]

+1

I'd love a fast-track discount certificate program specifically designed for
OSS projects. I've considered getting certs for Authenticode before but
it's difficult, expensive and inconvenient for an individual to acquire and
maintain.

Jeff.

[Sam Ramji]

This is a really interesting idea. We'll look into this and see what
we can do.

Cheers,

Sam

[John Petersen]

<<
As for the IP and copyright stuff I think the developer/s should have
some participation and some say in the direction a project goes.
<<

The best way to faciliate this is for the foundation to provide guidance on the different licenses. For example, if you want to be sure down stream consumers of your code will be required to submit changes to the project, then something along the lines of an LGPL license would be a good idea. On the other hand, if you are not concerned with whether folks continue to feed the OSS tributary, then a BSD type of license may be fine. A third alternative is a dual license scenario. The key is, it is at the beginning of a project when these issues are best dealt with. In my opinion, while there are a ton of options out there, a handful of options will apply to 90+% of the situations out there. Other big issues involve contributed code. At the end of the day, a project relies on the representations the contributor is making. Example, if the project is BSD based, what happens if a contributor happens to include code that was previously released under an LGPL scenario. That can make for some problems. I see the codeplex foundation  as being a great resource in addressing these issues for developers.

John