Re: Assignment

[Jonathan Larmour <jifl@eCosCentric.com>]

Motoya Kurotsu wrote:
>>We have reached the stage that you need to get an assignment statement
>>signed. Please could you goto 
>>
>>http://sources.redhat.com/ecos/assign.html
>>
> 
> 
> Hi eCos maintainers;
> 
> I'm reading 'eCos Copyright Assignment Form' carefully now.
> I would like to ask some questions.

Andrew may call me an "expert" however I'm not, most importantly because I 
Am Not A Lawyer. Therefore what I say should not be read as legal advice 
in any way....

> 1) Can I or our company renounce this agreement in the future?
>    Assume the case where our company will make the intellectual 
>    policy more tight or the case where my successor doesn't accept 
>    this agreement. You may simply say "Don't send patches any more".
>    But you see legal department people often require more minuteness.

Obviously you cannot change the status of anything already contributed. 
However my understanding is that any contract can be cancelled once the 
other party (here, Red Hat) is notified, and in normal contract law either 
there would be some term explicitly covering cancellation in the contract, 
which there isn't here; or, the other party can claim damages. *But* there 
are no damages to claim!

As such, the effect is that, yes you can cancel the agreement in the 
future, once you let Red Hat know.


> 2) There is the clause titled "Which files have you changed so far,..."
>    Does it mean that the effective range of this agreement is limited
>    to the files which I would list there. Or does this agreement cover
>    all files under the ecos tree. In other words and strictly speaking, 
>    do I need to update this agreement everytime I want to change another 
>    file?

It means that we have to know what has been written so far so that 
copyright is explicitly assigned for those. Then the assignment contract 
will hold for new files in the future. There's a different legal status 
for files already written. So no, you don't need to update the agreement.

> 3) In recent source files, not RedHat but personal name is listed as
>    a copyright holder. Why? Redhat still holds copyright? Otherwise
>    the effectiveness of this agreement is in question, isn't it?
>    Or is there any legal agreement between the listed persons and RedHat?
> 
> I don't intend to be a nag but legal issues make me and our management 
> more conservative.

Sure. If it would make things easier, we are about to switch assignments 
to the Free Software Foundation. Perhaps you would prefer to assign to 
them? You can see a sneak peek at 
http://ecos.sourceware.org/ecos/maintainers/assign-fsf.html but do not 
fill it in yet as we haven't yet formally agreed on it.

Jifl
-- 
eCosCentric    http://www.eCosCentric.com/    The eCos and RedBoot experts
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