[Python-ideas] Contributions to official documentation versus contributions to wiki (was: Frequently Rejected Ideas Was: Deprecating rarely used str methods)

[Ben Finney]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org>
writes:

> Ben Finney writes:
>
>  > Normal people are also those who want to avoid the requirement for
>  > reading and signing a legal document assigning special rights to the
>  > PSF, just to propose a fix.
>
> Ben, you are welcome to dislike signing CAs, but please stop spreading
> FUD about the PSF's CA.

My claim is factual, not FUD, and is entailed within the terms of the
contributor agreement.

> The rights explicitly specified in the CA actually constitute
> *restrictions* on the PSF compared to the rights granted by the
> licenses themselves.

The contributor agreement grants to PSF the unilateral power to
redistribute the contribution under “any other open source license
approved by [the PSF]”, a power not granted to other recipients of the
contribution. So yes, it arrogates special rights to the PSF.

Does this make the PSF awful? No, of course not. But I can't pretend it
is acceptable to grant special terms to one party in the community.


Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net>
writes:

> On Sun, 11 Aug 2013 11:25:41 +1000
> Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> > Normal people are also those who want to avoid the requirement for
> > reading and signing a legal document assigning special rights to the
> > PSF, just to propose a fix.
>
> I don't think we ask for a CLA when someone submits a 10-line patch.

Not true, at least in my experience. I have been asked to submit a
contributor agreement for small patches to the documentation. Since I
cannot in good conscience accept the PSF's requirements, they reject
such contributions even under an acceptable all-parties-equal license.

-- 
 \      “As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely |
  `\       upon authority, there is no end to our troubles.” —Bertrand |
_o__)                                Russell, _Unpopular Essays_, 1950 |
Ben Finney