Ben asks:
>> Beyond the issues already covered by the draft EROS license, I want a
>> separate agreement with everyone who can modify the source base that
they
>> will not knowingly introduce contaminated source. I don't expect that
>> anybody would do this, but the legal audit trail may one day prove
>> important.
>
>What do you mean by "contaminated"?
Copyright law does not have a notion of innocent infringement. Suppose you hand me a piece of code and tell me in writing that you own it. I redistribute the code and some third party later shows in court that they own the copyright and you don't. I can be sued.
There is little that can be done about this, but having procedures in place that show that I exercised reasonable dilligence can be very helpful.
Therefore, I am debating the merits of defining a simple policy (based on number of lines of code changed) for how large a change must be before a copyright assignment agreement is required, and formally asking everyone with write access to the EROS repository to collaborate in ensuring that this policy is enforced.
The key problem is this: if I work for, say, IBM, and I write a change to EROS, IBM owns it. I can't give up rights that I don't have, so the clause in MPL saying that by distributing I agree to ratcheta ratcheta may not be sufficient.
Rest assured that I continue my attempts to divine a simpler solution.
Jonathan