[maemo-developers] Contribution guidelines

[From: Marius Vollmer]

"ext Quim Gil" <quim.gil at nokia.com> writes:

> http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_contribution_guidelines
>
> License
>
> The license of the code contributed is the one of the component patched.

I would relax this:

   Obviously, the license of the contributed code must be compatible
   with the project that you contribute to.  It is a good idea to use
   the same license as the project that you contribute to.

> Copyright
>
> Authors of a creative work retain their copyrights.

What about

     You do not need to assign your copyright to Nokia or some other
     entity.  (That's why you need to use compatible license conditions;
     Nokia can not change them to be compatible.)

> Bugfixes are generally not considered creative work and don't generate
> copyrights.

This sounds strange.  Have courts decided on this manner in the past?  I
don't think we can decide ourselves what kind of work is copyrightable
or not, so "considered" is probably the wrong word here.

As usual, the GNU project has blazed the trail:

    http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Legally-Significant

    4.2 Legally Significant Changes

    If a person contributes more than around 15 lines of code and/or
    text that is legally significant for copyright purposes, we need
    copyright papers for that contribution, as described above.

    A change of just a few lines (less than 15 or so) is not legally
    significant for copyright. A regular series of repeated changes,
    such as renaming a symbol, is not legally significant even if the
    symbol has to be renamed in many places. Keep in mind, however, that
    a series of minor changes by the same person can add up to a
    significant contribution. What counts is the total contribution of
    the person; it is irrelevant which parts of it were contributed
    when.

    Copyright does not cover ideas. If someone contributes ideas but no
    text, these ideas may be morally significant as contributions, and
    worth giving credit for, but they are not significant for copyright
    purposes. Likewise, bug reports do not count for copyright purposes.

    When giving credit to people whose contributions are not legally
    significant for copyright purposes, be careful to make that fact
    clear. The credit should clearly say they did not contribute
    significant code or text.

    When people's contributions are not legally significant because they
    did not write code, do this by stating clearly what their
    contribution was. For instance, you could write this:

         /*
          * Ideas by:
          *   Richard Mlynarik <mly at adoc.xerox.com> (1997)
          *   Masatake Yamato <masata-y at is.aist-nara.ac.jp> (1999)
          */

    Ideas by: makes it clear that Mlynarik and Yamato here contributed
    only ideas, not code. Without the Ideas by: note, several years from
    now we would find it hard to be sure whether they had contributed
    code, and we might have to track them down and ask them.

    When you record a small patch in a change log file, first search for
    previous changes by the same person, and see if per past
    contributions, plus the new one, add up to something legally
    significant. If so, you should get copyright papers for all per
    changes before you install the new change.

    If that is not so, you can install the small patch. Write ‘(tiny
    change)’ after the patch author's name, like this: