Thanks Richard. So then Jonathan would make a decision that where both of two conditions were met, a modified version of the Federal Government Contractor CLA would be used. The two conditions would be (i) the work was created by a contractor under a federal government contract, and (ii) the copyright in the work is public domain. I understand that the rule for federal contractors is that they do retain copyright absent some exception or special term in the agreement. In this case, Batelle would have to decide, and represent to the Foundation, that Kevin's work was public domain - presumably under the "de minimis" exception suggested by the Batelle lawyer. If we take this approach, it seems to me that the US Government CLA would be the best CLA to non-materially revise since it already reflects that the copyright is public domain. The non-material revision could be the addition of the sentence that appears in the Educational Community License: "Any patent license granted hereby with respect to contributions by an individual employed by an institution or organization is limited to patent claims where the individual that is the author of the Work is also the inventor of the patent claims licensed, and where the organization or institution has the right to grant such license under applicable grant and research funding agreements. No other express or implied licenses are granted." Is this consistent with what you are thinking might work? Alice -----Original Message----- From: Richard Fontana [mailto:rfontana@redhat.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 4, 2013 3:35 PM To: Alice King Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. On Wed, Dec 04, 2013 at 03:56:05PM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:
Given the obstacles contained in the OpenStack Foundation bylaws IP policy to flexibility in handling inbound contributions, I think the easiest solution (though not the most desirable one) would be for the Executive Director to make "non material amendments" to the Individual (and/or Corporate) CLA so that a federal government contractor not holding copyright on what is being contributed can use such a CLA.
Or perhaps the Executive Director could non-materially revise the US Government CLA to have it cover the case of contributions coming in from contractors? I realize that might seem to contradict the essence of my previous response, but the problem I see here is balancing reduction of contributor red tape against the need for a fair IPR licensing policy. - RF