[IAEP] Sugar Labs Individual Membership

Greg Dekoenigsberg gdk at redhat.com
Fri Sep 12 08:30:08 EDT 2008


> Healthy communities and volunteer-driven organizations are based on 
> personal trust and not on prosecution of those who breach legal 
> agreements.  Beware of those who tell you otherwise: they might be 
> lawyers in disguise!

This is well and good, until someone steals a piece of Sugar code and 
stuffs it into a proprietary application.  At that point, issues like "who 
has standing to defend this codebase in a court of law" are no longer 
niceties, but absolute necessities.

Contributor agreements exist to specify and protect rights, both of the 
project and of the participant.  It's not internal forces you're seeking 
to protect yourself from with such agreements -- it's external forces.

--g


More information about the IAEP mailing list