Vladimir Marangozov wrote:
... BTW, I'm surprised by the fact that in an Open Source world I'm asked to sign a licence agreement with CNRI or to send e-mails for contributed code. If Python or Linux had had such constraints from the start, they wouldn't have been what they are today.
Actually, this isn't surprising at all. The Free Software Foundation *requires* this kind of thing to be filed with them before you contribute code to the FSF. Essentially, it is a way for the FSF (and CNRI) to legally state that they own the copyright on the particular code. Without that, the contributor could come along later and claim a copyright on the code. The IBM folks who are working on Apache have provided legal releases to the Apache Software Foundation that basically states that IBM won't try to assume any rights under copyright law on the code they contribute to Apache. In fact, every time that I receive a patch for my mod_dav Apache module, the IBM guy attaches a release to the email that has the patch. In a pure, cooperative, world none of this would be necessary. However, the world simply doesn't work that way and all this stuff (licenses, copyrights, releases) is there to prevent Bad Things from happening. It isn't evil in itself, but simply a reflection of the business environment and the society that we're working within. Cheers, -g -- Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/