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Insuring Contributed Code is Legal?
WanderingGhost asks: "Suppose you start a free software project and have people from all over the world wanting to contribute (hey, that's good eh?) How can you tell if they actually have the right to contribute at all? Contributors may live in different countries and work for different companies, and that means different laws and different contractual agreements. Aside from asking the person (I've found that this doesn't always work), what else would you do? Is there some place where you can find all information about IP laws of different countries (for example Japan, India, China, Russia) just so you can tell what would be the 'default holder of copyright' if a work contract says nothing about IP rights?"
I think you mean ENsuring.
This grammatic lesson brought to you by the letter, "e".
insuring your project against copyright lawsuit might "ensure" you get to keep contributed code..
well.. it was just a thought..
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Insure legal code
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I think the idea is to get contributors to send you something, signed, on a piece of paper. This is what the FSF does, and a few other large projects have followed their lead. In FSF's case, the piece of paper is also a copyright assignment, which you probably don't want as it puts a lot of potential contributors off. What you want to do is check out something like the following with a lawyer:
I hereby certify that the work I have submitted to is my own work, which I am entitled to licence under the provisions of , and that I am not aware of any patents or other legal issues that may prevent its use in . I hereby grant a licence to distribute the work under the terms of (attached).
You possibly also want to include a similarly phrased paragraph to cover future submissions by the same contributor, if you expect any.
What this does is (again, IANAL, so this isn't legal advice, check it with a professional, actual facts may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction):
1. Means you've performed "due diligence" before accepting the work. You've got a signed statement from somebody stating that there wouldn't be any issues. If you do have legal expenses insurance (and I'd recommend it; at least where I live it isn't expensive) your insurers will almost certainly want to see something like this before they'll agree to defend you in a court case. In a court case, I think it would be enough to show that you hadn't knowingly infringed any copyrights, which may be enough to prevent any damages being awarded against you. You'd have to cease distribution, of course, but in the end it would probably not actually cost you anything. It's probably not as good in the case of a patent infringement, where I believe strict liability rules apply, but that's substantially less likely to affect you, fortunately.
2. Means you've got a clear, easy to prove licence to distribute, so your contributor can't turn around and sue you. Yes, this is unlikely, but it's great to cover all angles.
A GPG-signed e-mail may be adequate, but check with a lawyer. In my jurisdiction, I believe it would be iff I could prove the key belonged to the person I believe it to, which can be a quite tricky proposition. In yours, it might not be acceptable at all. Check everything. A signed fax may be better than an e-mail. This is the kind of knowledge you pay a lawyer for.