Draft: License policy for contributors

[Adam Jackson]

On Wed, 2008-12-03 at 06:28 +1100, Daniel Stone wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, Dec 02, 2008 at 01:48:31PM -0500, Adam Jackson wrote:
> > I don't know what our documentation licensing stance is.  MIT would keep
> > things simple, but I don't know if it's appropriate for docs.
> 
> What're our options? GFDL is out as DFSG-incompatible.

Yeah, MIT does seem to be a good plan, at least for the non-spec
documentation.  Alan and Mikhail do mention CC-BY, which might be okay
for spec docs?  Would have to check.

> > The X.Org Foundation is dedicated to improving the open source reference
> > implementation of the X Window System for the benefit of all.  To this
> > end, code and documentation contributions are required to be under a
> > suitably permissive license.  The preferred code license is the MIT
> > license; the canonical form of the MIT license is here: [ insert link to
> > version with generic "THE AUTHORS" rather than explicit author names ].
> 
> xserver/COPYING has a boilerplate, but we never did get resolution on
> whether or not the 'the names of blah blah may not be used' paragraph
> was superfluous.

I think it is, since you don't have that right _anyway_.  The OSI
variant text doesn't seem to have that clause, so, bonus.

> > For small changes, including patches sent through a bug tracker or
> > mailing list, changes are assumed to be under the MIT license.  If you
> > do not agree to this, please refrain from sending us such patches in the
> > first place, and ask to have your changes reverted if necessary.
> 
> Er, 'under the license listed in the file(s), or MIT if none'?

Probably best, yeah.  Given the change waiver further on, that would
still cover relicensing for FreeB-like cases as long as the contributed
patch didn't include a Copyright line.

- ajax
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