[foundation-board] Knight grant contract

Wed Dec 7 15:21:21 UTC 2011

On 7 December 2011 15:16, Ben Laurie <ben at links.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 3:12 PM, Becky Hogge <becky.hogge at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 7 December 2011 14:34, Ben Laurie <ben at links.org> wrote:
>>> On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Martin Keegan <martin at no.ucant.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, 25 Nov 2011, Martin Keegan wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> > >From this contract, it looks like the latter (from the final para "The
>>>>> > $15,000 cost of the fiscal agency will come out of grant funds and has
>>>>> > been added to the grant amount." Total grant is for $265,000). I'm
>>>>>
>>>>> That's correct.
>>>>
>>>> [replying to myself here].
>>>>
>>>>> > happy for OKF to sign this, subject to satisfactory explanation of
>>>>> > browser plugin issue James has raised.
>>>>>
>>>>> The terms "browser plugin" and "embeddable widgets" result from a few
>>>>> rounds of redrafting. I've spoken to and written to Knight to get them to
>>>>> include a reference to this in the side letter, acknowledging how the
>>>>> terms should fit together.
>>>>
>>>> Ok. I sought clarification from Knight about the paperwork and amiguities.
>>>>
>>>> They've sent a side letter permitting the use of our preferred licence and
>>>> interpretation of the terminology above; I've attached this.
>>>
>>> Well, this prompts me to raise the question again: why is the AGPL our
>>> preferred licence? Would they be happy with a BSD or Apache licence?
>>
>> Can we continue this discussion on a separate mail thread or at next
>> week's Board meeting? I found the discussion you prompted on this on
>> the email labelled "CKAN licence" very helpful, but I don't think it's
>> useful to divert a discussion about contracts into one about licences.
>
> Well, the contact appears to tie us to a particular licence, so it
> seems hard to avoid...

True. I suppose my suggestion is rather that given the argument Jordan
made on the major deal changing licensing policy would be for the
organisation, and the relatively tight timeline of this project, could
we please not make finalising a change in OKF licensing policy a
contingency on signing this contract.

Cheers

Becky