Feedback needed from Agendaless Consulting on copyright, trademark, etc issues

[Andrey Tretyakov]

Hello,
Regarding Pylons Contributors Agreement. I see it as it's against the spirit of free software. I am ok with RPL and liberal licenses in general, don't
confuse me with GPL zealots, but signing rights transfer to a corporate entity would be against my principles, unless it is a non-commercial entity with
open and transparent governing process.
I am sure that PCA is a serious barrier preventing many people from contributing to the Pyramid project. There is also related issue that (c) Agendaless Consulting
copyright notice is present on the trypyramid.com website. Corporate copyright notice on a community website is a really bad idea in my opinion.

People mentioned that there was a discussion on transfer of all copyright (if needed), branding and trademark (if any) to umbrella non-commercial foundation.
So what is your official stance on this ? What is the current status of the transferral, if any is planned ?
I think (depending on laws) some form of agreement could be needed, but is there any chance that transfer of rights will not be required ?

Thanks,
Andrey

[Tres Seaver]

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On 05/13/2017 07:44 PM, Andrey Tretyakov wrote:

> Regarding Pylons Contributors Agreement. I see it as it's against the
> spirit of free software. I am ok with RPL and liberal licenses in
> general, don't confuse me with GPL zealots, but signing rights
> transfer to a corporate entity would be against my principles, unless
> it is a non-commercial entity with open and transparent governing
> process.

That would be your choice. The contributor agreement leaves intact your
rights to your own contributions (you assign a half interest in the
copyright, not the whole thing), and allows you to use the entire work
under a permissive license.

The point of the half assignment is to allow for a relicensing of the
work, should such be required, without having to find and get agreement
from dozens / hundreds of contributors.

> I am sure that PCA is a serious barrier preventing many people from
> contributing to the Pyramid project. There is also related issue that
> (c) Agendaless Consulting copyright notice is present on the
> trypyramid.com website. Corporate copyright notice on a community
> website is a really bad idea in my opinion.
>
> People mentioned that there was a discussion on transfer of all
> copyright (if needed), branding and trademark (if any) to umbrella
> non-commercial foundation. So what is your official stance on this ?
> What is the current status of the transferral, if any is planned ?

We have had a number of discussions of the issue over the years,
including talks with the SFC. There is no plan currently in place: it
would require setting up a Pylons-project-specific organization, which
would depend on having community members devote non-trivial amounts of
effort to create and sustain it.

None of the partners at Agendaless oppose the creation of such an
organization, but none of us has the bandwidth / interest to drive its
creation, either. If the community does get such an organiztion created,
Agendaless will be pleased to transfer its copyrights in the Pylons /
repoze software to it, assuming that the organization's bylaws were
reasonable (a promise that the software would continue to be available
under a simliarly-permissive license would be the only requirement I can
think of now).

> I think (depending on laws) some form of agreement could be needed,
> but is there any chance that transfer of rights will not be required
> ?

Contributions will continue to require assignment of half interest.
Should the hypothetical organization come into being, all that would
change would be the target of that assignment.


Tres.
- --
===================================================================
Tres Seaver +1 540-429-0999 tse...@palladion.com
Palladion Software "Excellence by Design" http://palladion.com
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[Andrey Tretyakov]

On Sunday, May 14, 2017 at 11:14:10 PM UTC+8, Tres Seaver wrote:

That would be your choice.  The contributor agreement leaves intact your
rights to your own contributions (you assign a half interest in the
copyright, not the whole thing), and allows you to use the entire work
under a permissive license.

IANAA, does it mean I retain full rights of my copy of the commit
(including right to relicense my copy) and Agendaless has the same rights but to
the commit itself ?

 

The point of the half assignment is to allow for a relicensing of the
work, should such be required, without having to find and get agreement
from dozens / hundreds of contributors.

It is still unclear why would you need to change the license ? Many projects pick
a license once and keep using it without any issues. The act of signing the
agreement would just assure the non-revocable nature of the commit, and everybody
would have peace of mind.

 

We have had a number of discussions of the issue over the years,
including talks with the SFC.  There is no plan currently in place:  it
would require setting up a Pylons-project-specific organization, which
would depend on having community members devote non-trivial amounts of
effort to create and sustain it.

Why would it require pylons-specific org ? There are even 1-man projects under
the umbrella of SFC for example

 

None of the partners at Agendaless oppose the creation of such an
organization, but none of us has the bandwidth / interest to drive its
creation, either.  If the community does get such an organiztion created,
Agendaless will be pleased to transfer its copyrights in the Pylons /
repoze software to it, assuming that the organization's bylaws were
reasonable (a promise that the software would continue to be available
under a simliarly-permissive license would be the only requirement I can
think of now).

That is nice to hear

Contributions will continue to require assignment of half interest.
Should the hypothetical organization come into being, all that would
change would be the target of that assignment.

But if there will be no umbrella foundation, it means the issue will never be fixed,
which is very disappointing. The current situation promotes forking
instead of contribution


Andrey

[Tres Seaver]

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On 05/14/2017 05:41 PM, Andrey Tretyakov wrote:

> On Sunday, May 14, 2017 at 11:14:10 PM UTC+8, Tres Seaver wrote:
>>
>> That would be your choice. The contributor agreement leaves intact
>> your rights to your own contributions (you assign a half interest in
>> the copyright, not the whole thing), and allows you to use the
>> entire work under a permissive license.
>>
> IANAA, does it mean I retain full rights of my copy of the commit
> (including right to relicense my copy) and Agendaless has the same
> rights but to the commit itself ?

You could indeed relicense your code. What you cannot do is change the
license to the code as it exists within the repository: it will remain
under the same license as the larger body of code.

>> The point of the half assignment is to allow for a relicensing of
>> the work, should such be required, without having to find and get
>> agreement from dozens / hundreds of contributors.
>>
>
> It is still unclear why would you need to change the license ? Many
> projects pick a license once and keep using it without any issues. The
> act of signing the agreement would just assure the non-revocable
> nature of the commit, and everybody would have peace of mind.

The ability to reclicense the code is an escape hatch for problems
created by (hypothetical) future shifts in the legal / regulatory
climate. Projects (e.g., the Linux kernel) which do *not* have a unitary
owner capable of relicensing are indeed stuck with the initial license,
even if issues arise with how it is interpreted in various jurisdictions
around the world.

>> We have had a number of discussions of the issue over the years,
>> including talks with the SFC. There is no plan currently in place:
>> it would require setting up a Pylons-project-specific organization,
>> which would depend on having community members devote non-trivial
>> amounts of effort to create and sustain it.
>>
> Why would it require pylons-specific org ? There are even 1-man
> projects under the umbrella of SFC for example

The discussions which project members had with the SFC did not bear fruit
in the past, which isn't to say they couldn't be restarted: only that
*I* (and Paul and Chris) won't be driving them. One sticking point was
that there are literally scores of repositories under the `Pylons` and
`repoze` organizations on Github, all published under the same license
and using the same contribution regime. That meant that the "adopt a
repository" model already pioneered by SFC for other projects did not work.

>> None of the partners at Agendaless oppose the creation of such an
>> organization, but none of us has the bandwidth / interest to drive
>> its creation, either. If the community does get such an organiztion
>> created, Agendaless will be pleased to transfer its copyrights in
>> the Pylons / repoze software to it, assuming that the organization's
>> bylaws were reasonable (a promise that the software would continue
>> to be available under a simliarly-permissive license would be the
>> only requirement I can think of now).
>>
> That is nice to hear
>
> Contributions will continue to require assignment of half interest.
>> Should the hypothetical organization come into being, all that would
>> change would be the target of that assignment.
>>
> But if there will be no umbrella foundation, it means the issue will
> never be fixed, which is very disappointing. The current situation
> promotes forking instead of contribution

Only for the subset of the community who are too suspicious of
Agendaless' stewardship of the code. Forks incur serious engineering
costs over time, compared to collaboration: in my view, forking is a
clear lose for both parties, compared to the (vanishingly tiny) risk that
Agendaless would somehow do Something Evil(TM) with the code in the
future. For one thing, iven the permissive license, *anybody* can do
Something Evil with the code: that is just the nature of the beast.


Tres.
- --

- --
===================================================================
Tres Seaver +1 540-429-0999 tse...@palladion.com
Palladion Software "Excellence by Design" http://palladion.com
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[Andrey Tretyakov]

On Monday, May 15, 2017 at 8:00:18 AM UTC+8, Tres Seaver wrote:

The discussions which project members had with the SFC did not bear fruit
in the past, which isn't to say they couldn't be restarted:  only that
*I* (and Paul and Chris) won't be driving them. One sticking point was
that there are literally scores of repositories under the `Pylons` and
`repoze` organizations on Github, all published under the same license
and using the same contribution regime.  That meant that the "adopt a
repository" model already pioneered by SFC for other projects did not work.

I see. There are too many separate subprojects with different maintainers, so
SFC would not be able to deal with them directly.
 

Forks incur serious engineering costs over time, compared to collaboration:  in my view, forking is a
clear lose for both parties,

I agree with this
 
Is it possible to remove/change the copyright notice on the trypyramid.com website ?
Something that would pass the right message that it's a community-driven website dedicated to free oss
Also in my opinion requirement on contributing docs / PR material should be relaxed, because that is the
biggest area where Pyramid lacks people and could use all help it gets to improve the current situation,
where even technically inferior (imho) Flask gets more contributions/add-ons/PR


Thanks
Andrey

[Steve Piercy]

On 5/14/17 at 5:32 PM, bezo...@gmail.com (Andrey Tretyakov) pronounced:

>Is it possible to remove/change the copyright notice on the
>trypyramid.com website ?

To what do you suggest it should be changed?

Copyright notice removal is not a good option. Recently a
prominent domain name under the Pylons Project was allowed to
expire, it got purchased by another entity, and some of the
copyrighted content from our website was reused on their
website. It's now a click bait website. Although a copyright
notice won't prevent such unethical behavior, it is a mild
deterrent and would help our case if we were to pursue legal action.

--steve

------------------------
Steve Piercy, Soquel, CA

[Andrey Tretyakov]

On Monday, May 15, 2017 at 9:18:20 AM UTC+8, Steve Piercy wrote:

On 5/14/17 at 5:32 PM, bezo...@gmail.com (Andrey Tretyakov) pronounced:

>Is it possible to remove/change the copyright notice on the
>trypyramid.com website ?

To what do you suggest it should be changed?

It depends,currently trypyramid is hosted in the pylons repo, so I guess legally
it has to the same copyright.
However, something like (c) trypyramid.com contributors would work better.

Copyright notice removal is not a good option.  Recently a
prominent domain name under the Pylons Project was allowed to
expire, it got purchased by another entity, and some of the
copyrighted content from our website was reused on their
website.  It's now a click bait website.  Although a copyright
notice won't prevent such unethical behavior, it is a mild
deterrent and would help our case if we were to pursue legal action.

The best would be to separate docs /PR material from the software code.
It doesn't even have to have same license.
The most important thing for opensource writers is giving credit, that's why
many people like Creative Commons licenses. I understand the need for
contributor agreement for the software, but not for the docs / PR materials.

Also, who would pursue legal action if Agendaless people are busy and
don't have resources ? If it was a foundation then you would have your
own attorneys but with the current situation I don't see it happen.
Remember internet is not only US where you can easily enforce copyright.
It would be like chasing mosquitoes, i'm afraid.

[Bert JW Regeer]

On May 14, 2017, at 17:59, Tres Seaver <tse...@palladion.com> wrote:

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On 05/14/2017 05:41 PM, Andrey Tretyakov wrote:

On Sunday, May 14, 2017 at 11:14:10 PM UTC+8, Tres Seaver wrote:

[…]

We have had a number of discussions of the issue over the years, 
including talks with the SFC.  There is no plan currently in place:
it would require setting up a Pylons-project-specific organization,
which would depend on having community members devote non-trivial
amounts of effort to create and sustain it.

Why would it require pylons-specific org ? There are even 1-man
projects under the umbrella of SFC for example

The discussions which project members had with the SFC did not bear fruit
in the past, which isn't to say they couldn't be restarted:  only that
*I* (and Paul and Chris) won't be driving them. One sticking point was
that there are literally scores of repositories under the `Pylons` and
`repoze` organizations on Github, all published under the same license
and using the same contribution regime.  That meant that the "adopt a
repository" model already pioneered by SFC for other projects did not work.

There are a few of us current core contributors that are trying to find a solution so that we can more easily accept donations and contributions to allow further development of software under The Pylons Project. The discussions have been with various organisations to find a good fit that will allow us to further the project without giving up too much control. Almost all organisations we have talked to where we might be a good fit would require a CLA with a copyright assignment, so this is not something that is going away even if we find a new “host”.

Ideally we would like to be a sub-org of an existing 501(3)c, with our own governance and policies regarding our source code. 

As it currently stands there are no issues with the governance of the source code. If Agendaless were to go “evil” there are quite a few of us that would be more than happy to fork the code and continue under the existing license that the code exists under.

[…]

Tres.
- -- 
- -- 
===================================================================
Tres Seaver          +1 540-429-0999          tse...@palladion.com
Palladion Software   "Excellence by Design"    http://palladion.com

Please be aware that certain things can not and will not just change overnight. The copyright on the Try Pyramid site is just one of those things. The source code is freely available to anyone and everyone, you get to decide whether you want to contribute under the existing terms and conditions, continuing to hammer on this point won’t get you very far.

This is a slow moving process and moves at the pace of volunteers.

Bert JW Regeer

[Michael Merickel]

On Sun, May 14, 2017 at 8:46 PM, Andrey Tretyakov <bezo...@gmail.com> wrote:

The best would be to separate docs /PR material from the software code.
It doesn't even have to have same license.
The most important thing for opensource writers is giving credit, that's why
many people like Creative Commons licenses. I understand the need for
contributor agreement for the software, but not for the docs / PR materials.

I don't know what we do with the website but I will say that for doc contributions I tend to not worry about the contributor's agreement - whereas for code we do. I'm one of the primary maintainers and I honestly don't know if that's right or not.

That being said, the primary Pyramid docs *are* licensed under a different license. It is CC-NC-SA and you can see it here:

https://github.com/Pylons/pyramid/blob/master/LICENSE.txt#L101-L105

As far as the website and other marketing, I cannot comment on those as I do not deal with them often.

[Jonathan Vanasco]

As a non-core contributor to the ecosystem and user:

1. Is that a typo on the copyright of the agendaless website?  isn't it "Fredericksburg" ?

2. I'm not a fan of the code license, but it's no big deal.  i'd much rather see the MIT license or similar.  The one-half interest assignment is a brilliant approach; it could probably be explained better in the agreement ("this is simply so that we may ___,").