Cross-project collaboration project

[Sean Egan]

Youness Alaoui e-mailed devel@... last week. He was looking for
support to start a project on freedesktop.org called OpenIM. This
would be a cross-team effort to communicate and document various IM
protocols and other related topics, like Adium's Message Styles,
currently supported by a bunch of clients, or standardizing smiley
themes and the sort. After some discussion, we decided that IM Freedom
would be a more appropriate organization to host this.

This would require little resources from IM Freedom, Inc. We would
host a wiki (or something similar) as http://imfreedom.org for us to
work on documentation. We'd also host a few more mailing lists (I
suspect oscar-devel@ msn-devel@, etc.). I don't see any of these
things having a significant impact on our resources. IM Freedom would
also take liability for all the documentation, to protect individual
contributors if we get accused of revealing trade secrets or
something.

I believe our rules say that all issues should be brought up for
debate on e-mail one week before a vote, so please discuss away.

-s.
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[Luke Schierer-5]

On Tue, Dec 18, 2007 at 01:29:06PM -0800, Sean Egan wrote:

> Youness Alaoui e-mailed devel@... last week. He was looking for
> support to start a project on freedesktop.org called OpenIM. This
> would be a cross-team effort to communicate and document various IM
> protocols and other related topics, like Adium's Message Styles,
> currently supported by a bunch of clients, or standardizing smiley
> themes and the sort. After some discussion, we decided that IM Freedom
> would be a more appropriate organization to host this.
>
> This would require little resources from IM Freedom, Inc. We would
> host a wiki (or something similar) as http://imfreedom.org for us to
> work on documentation. We'd also host a few more mailing lists (I
> suspect oscar-devel@ msn-devel@, etc.). I don't see any of these
> things having a significant impact on our resources. IM Freedom would
> also take liability for all the documentation, to protect individual
> contributors if we get accused of revealing trade secrets or
> something.
>
> I believe our rules say that all issues should be brought up for
> debate on e-mail one week before a vote, so please discuss away.
>
> -s.

Since we (Daniel and Ethan mostly) solved the trac performance issues,
we have been doing well on our current hardware.  I see no issues in
adding another wiki and the additional mailing lists.

Having the protocol development centralized to spread the cost in time
and effort across a larger number of developers is of course very
desirable.  I support this idea.

luke

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[Evan Schoenberg]

On Dec 18, 2007, at 4:29 PM, "Sean Egan" <seanegan@...> wrote:

> IM Freedom would
> also take liability for all the documentation, to protect individual
> contributors if we get accused of revealing trade secrets or
> something.
>
> I believe our rules say that all issues should be brought up for
> debate on e-mail one week before a vote, so please discuss away.

I think it's a great idea and also a fantastic first imfreedom-as-
imfreedom effort.

To maximize legal protection, I think we should ask that copyright for  
all protocol documentation and sample code be assigned to imfreedom...  
But IANAL. Sean, could you ask the lawyers if this is the right  
practice and, if so, if anything specific is involved in its execution?

-Evan
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[Sean Egan]

On Dec 18, 2007 1:42 PM, Evan Schoenberg <evan.s@...> wrote:
> To maximize legal protection, I think we should ask that copyright for
> all protocol documentation and sample code be assigned to imfreedom...
> But IANAL. Sean, could you ask the lawyers if this is the right
> practice and, if so, if anything specific is involved in its execution?

I've already put in the question.

-s.
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[Mark Doliner]

On Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:42:34 -0500, Evan Schoenberg wrote

> On Dec 18, 2007, at 4:29 PM, "Sean Egan" <seanegan@...> wrote:
>
> > IM Freedom would
> > also take liability for all the documentation, to protect individual
> > contributors if we get accused of revealing trade secrets or
> > something.
> >
> > I believe our rules say that all issues should be brought up for
> > debate on e-mail one week before a vote, so please discuss away.
>
> I think it's a great idea and also a fantastic first imfreedom-as-
> imfreedom effort.
>
> To maximize legal protection, I think we should ask that copyright
> for  all protocol documentation and sample code be assigned to
> imfreedom...  But IANAL. Sean, could you ask the lawyers if this is
> the right  practice and, if so, if anything specific is involved in
> its execution?

I'm totally in favor of this.  So Youness Alaoui supports this idea, too?  And
he intends to help get things started (initial set up, spreading the word
around, etc)?

-Mark
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[Ethan Blanton-3]

Sean Egan spake unto us the following wisdom:
> Youness Alaoui e-mailed devel@... last week. He was looking for
> support to start a project on freedesktop.org called OpenIM. This
> would be a cross-team effort to communicate and document various IM
> protocols and other related topics, like Adium's Message Styles,
> currently supported by a bunch of clients, or standardizing smiley
> themes and the sort. After some discussion, we decided that IM Freedom
> would be a more appropriate organization to host this.

I think this is a fantastic idea; early on we had discussed the
possibility that imfreedom.org could collect IM "standards" like fd.o
collects DE "standards" -- this seems like that idea, come again.  I
feel that it's a great way for IMF to "give" to the community in a way
that we can sustain and that won't step on toes.

> This would require little resources from IM Freedom, Inc. We would
> host a wiki (or something similar) as http://imfreedom.org for us to
> work on documentation. We'd also host a few more mailing lists (I
> suspect oscar-devel@ msn-devel@, etc.). I don't see any of these
> things having a significant impact on our resources. IM Freedom would
> also take liability for all the documentation, to protect individual
> contributors if we get accused of revealing trade secrets or
> something.
>
> I believe our rules say that all issues should be brought up for
> debate on e-mail one week before a vote, so please discuss away.

I am presently out of the country, and my connectivity is spotty.  If
this should come to a vote while I am disconnected, I am in favor of
providing resources to such a project.  I realize that isn't a "vote"
per se, but just so you all know where I stand.  :-)

Ethan

--
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy
for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes.
                -- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764


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[Sean Egan]

On Dec 18, 2007 2:08 PM, Sean Egan <seanegan@...> wrote:
> On Dec 18, 2007 1:42 PM, Evan Schoenberg <evan.s@...> wrote:
> > To maximize legal protection, I think we should ask that copyright for
> > all protocol documentation and sample code be assigned to imfreedom...
> > But IANAL. Sean, could you ask the lawyers if this is the right
> > practice and, if so, if anything specific is involved in its execution?
>
> I've already put in the question.

Sorry for the delayed reponse: holidays and all.

I spoke with a lawyer last week. The gist is that we shouldn't worry
too much about this. The chances of anyone trying to sue anyone over
this is pretty slim to begin with. If they *were* to sue someone,
they'd prefer to a faceless corporation over some hobbyist, even
without any formal relationship, or copyright assignment, or anything
like that. So, chances are you probably get de facto liability
protection just from having the corporate structure in place.

If someone's paranoid, we can easily formalize some agreement that
says that the work is being done specifically as part of IM Freedom,
rather than just using IM Freedom's resources. Pidgin developers, for
instance, get this automatically, as contributors to Pidgin are
considered volunteers for IM Freedom. We're willing to provide this
sort of protection (and non-profit status) to other projects that want
it.

Copyright assignment, which we'd previously brought up, turns out to
be mostly irrelevant as far as liability goes; it's only useful to
make it easier to maintain a progeny on the code and make it easier to
enforce license violations.

So, to sum it up, there's really nothing to worry about, but if you
are worried anyway, we can certainly help anyone out.

-s.
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