[squeak-dev] re: Request for the foundation

Stephen Pair stephen at pairhome.net
Mon Mar 24 14:40:41 UTC 2008


I think this is one of the most important responsibilities that the board
has (sorting out the contribution process and maintaining records of
licenses, etc).  A number of projects require every contributor to mail in a
signed contributor form (that states the license under which the software is
being contributed).  Those papers are usually maintained in a vault
somewhere.

A more ideal solution would be an electronic signature system where one
signs a secure hash of the source code along with a statement of the license
terms.  If the process is well understood and documented, the records
organized and retained, and the public keys of the contributors reasonably
verified to be authentic, I imagine one could argue successfully for a judge
or jury that the licenses really are as advertised.  But, I think I'd still
want to get the opinion of a tech savvy lawyer first.  And, it might be wise
to use both both mechanisms (digital and paper) until there is a consensus
that the digital method is on sound legal footing.

- Stephen

On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 2:55 PM, Craig Latta <craig at netjam.org> wrote:

>
> Hi Stef--
>
>  > There is no version mentioned, no date.
>
>       There is an Effective Date, so that the agreement applies to the
> contributions made by the signer through that date. A list of signers is
> available at [1]. The board does not have a list of the Effective Dates;
> my expectation is that we will get copies of all the signed agreements,
> for our counsel at the Software Freedom Conservancy to retain and for
> our own reference.
>
>      It is up to us to decide how to treat contributions made by a
> person after their Effective Date. The board has not yet made a final
> decision about this. I will bring it up at the next meeting, on
> 2008-04-02.
>
>
>      thanks,
>
> -C
>
> [1] http://netjam.org/squeak/contributors
>
> --
> Craig Latta
> improvisational musical informaticist
> www.netjam.org
> Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20080324/c947399d/attachment.htm


More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list