Michael Meeks on LibreOffice<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\nI’ve been around this Free and Open Source Software thing for a while now and I’ve noticed a pattern. People who hack on free software seldom have a desire to spend time speaking to the company lawyers instead of doing their jobs.<\/p>\n
If you require a contributor agreement signed, it doesn’t involve an individual. It involves a legal department. Being a free software developer is a different mindset than working on proprietary software. No longer are you just working on one bit of software, you can work on any bit of software. Find a bug in your compiler? Well, you can fix that. Find a bug in a library you’re using? You can both work around it and submit a patch that fixes it.<\/p>\n
There is a different between an open source project<\/strong> and an open source product<\/strong>. An open source product<\/strong> is easy – you just publish your source\/binary packages with an open source license and do all your development and discussion inside the company. Easy and simple for most places to execute.<\/p>\nWhat is harder is having an open source project<\/strong>. This is where your company participates in the project, and is a trickier thing to get going – especially within large organisations that have historically been proprietary software houses. There are very few companies that have gotten this right, and even fewer that have gotten this right across the board. I would probably have to say that Red Hat is the company that consistently does this the best.<\/p>\nA low barrier to entry is what has made the largest, most successful free software projects what they are today. If you’re wanting your project to be an open source project<\/strong> and not an open source product<\/strong> – then you too must set a low barrier to entry. Contributor Agreements significantly<\/strong> raise the barrier to entry. Suddenly my 10 line patch to fix a bug turns into a discussion with my company lawyers, your company lawyers and goes from taking an extra 5 minutes to send an email with a patch to a mailing list into something that takes hours and hours of my time.<\/p>\nAny time I spend speaking to lawyers is time not spent improving the world. By having a Contributor Agreement you turn a 5 minute task into a several hour one, a task involving lawyers. You know what tasks involving lawyers are? Expensive. You now have developers not contributing to your project not because a lawyer said no, but because they worked out that the time and money that would be spent on contributing to your project not to be worth it for their company.<\/p>\n
The only people who enjoy talking business with lawyers is other lawyers and the mentally ill[1]. We’re developers, not lawyers – don’t make us talk to them for orders of magnitude more time than it takes to fix some bit of code.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
[1] I have lawyer friends, and that’s social time, not work. I’ve also worked with great lawyers, but I do wish the world was more sane to begin with and I didn’t need to spend as much time doing so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A good while ago now, there was a bit of activity from others discussing the impact that contributor agreements have on contributions. Most notably, from Simon Phipps and Michael Meeks: “Contributor Agreements Say Your Contribution Is Unwelcome” by Simon Phipps … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[76,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-code","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5a6n8-zv","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2088,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/28\/howto-screw-up-launching-a-free-software-project\/","url_meta":{"origin":2201,"position":0},"title":"HOWTO screw up launching a free software project","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2010-07-28","format":false,"excerpt":"Josh Berkus gave a great talk at linux.conf.au 2010 (the CFP for linux.conf.au 2011 is open until August 7th) entitled \"How to destroy your community\" (lwn coverage). It was a simple, patented, 10 step program, finely homed over time to have maximum effect. Each step is simple and we can\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "code"","block_context":{"text":"code","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/code\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3379,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/06\/we-open-source-it-and-then-developers-show-up-and-do-work-for-free\/","url_meta":{"origin":2201,"position":1},"title":"“We open source it, and then developers show up and do work for free”","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2013-08-06","format":false,"excerpt":"Those who have been around the free and open source software world long enough have heard \"We open source it, and then developers show up and do work for free\" at least once and have called bullshit on it at least once. It turns out that people don't go and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "code"","block_context":{"text":"code","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/code\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3523,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/22\/how-many-pages-of-tos-and-privacy-policies\/","url_meta":{"origin":2201,"position":2},"title":"How many pages of ToS and Privacy Policies?","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2013-10-22","format":false,"excerpt":"So, I started this thought experiment: let's assume for the moment that government is completely trustworthy, only has your interests at heart and doesn't secretly sell you out to whoever they feel like. Now, on top of that, what about the agreements you enter into with corporations? How long are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "life, the universe and everything"","block_context":{"text":"life, the universe and everything","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/life-the-universe-and-everything\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3685,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/25\/ghosts-of-mysql-past-part-7-pbxt\/","url_meta":{"origin":2201,"position":3},"title":"Ghosts of MySQL Past, Part 7: PBXT","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2014-02-25","format":false,"excerpt":"Recently, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been writing based on my linux.conf.au 2014 talk, which you can watch the recording of. Also see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6. My feed feel off Planet MySQL for a bit so you may have missed those posts - so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":60,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2003\/03\/11\/moving\/","url_meta":{"origin":2201,"position":4},"title":"moving….","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2003-03-11","format":false,"excerpt":"I've finally done it, i've set up my own software. no, it's not a fully working flamingspork.com or anything like that. I've decided to use the software Movable Type. It's pretty cool, and complete. http:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/ i guess i'll have to update the front page too :) if someone wants a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "life, the universe and everything"","block_context":{"text":"life, the universe and everything","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/life-the-universe-and-everything\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":653,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2006\/04\/19\/beat-on-state-of-the-dolphin-or-why-software-is-never-really-ready-until-a-20-release\/","url_meta":{"origin":2201,"position":5},"title":"Beat on “state of the dolphin” (or: Why Software is never really ready until a .20 release)","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2006-04-19","format":false,"excerpt":"Beat Vontobel blogs about \"fu\u00c3\u00beark: The silence of futhark and the state of the dolphin\" which is basically about how he's found that the 5.0.20 release of MySQL is when the 5.0 release is really starting to shine. This confirms my theory (that I've had for quite a while now...\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "GNOME"","block_context":{"text":"GNOME","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/gnome\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2934,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201\/revisions\/2934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}