Policy-Discussion

[Teus Hagen <teus AT theunis.org>]

As proposed last week here is the other proposal for a change in the CCA
(CAcert Community agreement). Am I right that the other change request
for change on Privacy did not raise comments? Please remmber to vote on
the  change in the privacy clause as well (also if you say Aye)!

Proposal for Contributions clause change to Policy group!

Please vote even if you agree (say Aye) to these two changes.



In the Contributions clause in the CAcert Community Agreement there is
an intention to transfer the useful rights to CAcert so that various
projects, documents, archives, etc have an ability to use your
contributions.

Within the area of contributions to CAcert there appear to be three areas:

     1. ordinary documents (like this post)
     2. controlled documents (from the audit CCS)
     3. open source (PH, C, etc)

For the 2nd group, the audit criteria creates a controlled set of
documents called the Controlled Specification or CCS, and section A.1 of
the audit criteria makes much of this
issue.  In short, CAcert needs to own/control that stuff to the
fullest;  there should be no danger or expectation that anyone can
change CAcert's will in this area.

This is covered in the Policy on Policies clause 6.2.  To address some
complaints about the rights transfer, it is suggested that it be
modified to this:

http://svn.cacert.org/CAcert/PolicyOnPolicy.html
=======================================
PoP 6.2
Contributions to formally controlled documents such as Policies are
transferred fully to CAcert Inc.
Copyrights and similar intellectual property rights
required to incorporate the Contribution are either transferred to
CAcert Inc, or, are issued and contributed under free, open,
non-restrictive, irrevocable, exclusive,
and clear licence to CAcert Inc.
In all cases, CAcert Inc licenses the contributions back to the
community under an open licence.
=======================================

This text uses *two methods* of transfer in order to cover
the difficulties with the German/French restrictions on
copyright.  As PoP is a "deep-down" document, we only need
to make sure that "deep-insiders" are aware of this, we
aren't challenging our ordinary users here.



Then, over in user-land, the CAcert Community Agreement can be changed
to cover the first area of ordinary contributions:

http://svn.cacert.org/CAcert/RegisteredUserAgreement.html
=======================================
CCA 1.3
You agree to a non-exclusive non-restrictive non-revokable
transfer of Licence to CAcert for your contributions.
That is, if you post an idea or comment on a CAcert forum,
or email it to other Users, your work can be used freely by the
Community for CAcert purposes, including placing under CAcert's licences
for wider publication.

You retain authorship rights, and the rights to also transfer
non-exclusive rights to other parties. That is, you can still use your
own ideas and contributions outside the Community.

Note that the following exceptions override this clause:

  * Contributions to controlled documents are subject to
    Policy on Policy (=> COD 1)

  * Source code is subject to CAcert's open source licence
    regime.
=======================================


This is a much softer transfer of licence of the rights.
This should be fine for all usual purposes.

There are some issues that don't fall well in those areas. Evaldo points
out that "logos" and other exclusive brand parts will need to be
exclusive, not non-exclusive.  Maybe we can live with that and ask for a
fuller transfer for things that might effect brands.

And finally, part 3 in the above list is not covered at all.  Open
source is a wider discussion that hasn't been had; although the board
decided to go in principle open source, a licence hasn't been chosen,
and other details have not been worked out.  Watch this space.



END