[foundation-board] Knight grant contract

Wed Dec 7 15:55:42 UTC 2011

On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 3:21 PM, Becky Hogge <becky.hogge at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Perhaps then we should leave it more open in the contract? OTOH, I
don't know why we needed to get this letter since the contract already
says "a GPL license".

>
> Cheers
>
> Becky
>
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