new terms of use/paid contributions - do they apply to mediawiki - Wikitech-l

Risker

16 Jun 16 Jun

10:37 p.m.

New subject: new terms of use/paid contributions - do they apply to mediawiki

I do urge you to start such a discussion, bawolff. It would seem to me that a one- or two-week RFC should be sufficient to opt out contributions to MediaWiki. I'd be happy to support, even though it's more likely that I'll star in the next James Bond film than ever write a line of code. Risker/Anne On 16 June 2014 16:25, Brian Wolff <bawolff(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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Hi, So from what I understand, there's now been an amendment to WMF's terms of use to require disclosure of paid "contributions" [1]. Its a little unclear how this applies to MediaWiki as a project, but a literal reading of the policy makes it seem like MediaWiki is included. * MediaWiki is arguably a project of the Wikimedia foundation. The foundation's website says as much [2] *A commit/patchset certainly seems like a contribution. Thus the new policy would require anyone submitting code to use to declare who they work for. Personally this seems both unnecessary to me, as well as unlikely to be followed. For example, I see no reason why some person who uses our software should have to declare who they work for when they upstream a bug fix, etc. I would suggest we follow commons' lead [3], and declare that we do not have disclosure requirements for people giving us code. --bawolff [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Terms_of_Use&diff=0&a… [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects [3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comment/Alternative… _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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Arcane 21

10:47 p.m.

New subject: new terms of use/paid contributions - do they apply to mediawiki

In terms of applying the rule to things like articles written by someone for pay on behalf of someone else, that policy makes sense. As for code, I agree, that policy is counterproductive.

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To: wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2014 22:42:05 +0200 From: matma.rex(a)gmail.com Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] new terms of use/paid contributions - do they apply to mediawiki I agree. The new policy would just introduce pointless bureaucracy. -- Matma Rex _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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Gergo Tisza

11:01 p.m.

New subject: new terms of use/paid contributions - do they apply to mediawiki

On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 1:25 PM, Brian Wolff <bawolff(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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So from what I understand, there's now been an amendment to WMF's terms of use to require disclosure of paid "contributions" [1]. Its a little unclear how this applies to MediaWiki as a project, but a literal reading of the policy makes it seem like MediaWiki is included. * MediaWiki is arguably a project of the Wikimedia foundation. The foundation's website says as much [2] *A commit/patchset certainly seems like a contribution. Thus the new policy would require anyone submitting code to use to declare who they work for.

The terms of use is basically a clickwrap <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickwrap> agreement, right? When you make a contribution, you see "by clicking you accept blah blah blah" somewhere, once you click knowing that, you made a sort of contract from a legal point of view. So the terms of use only applies to you if you do actually see that piece of text, which does not seem to be present on mediawiki.org, nor on gerrit.wikimedia.org, and obviously not in the git interface when you are pushing a patch.

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Risker

11:12 p.m.

New subject: new terms of use/paid contributions - do they apply to mediawiki

On 16 June 2014 17:03, Dan Andreescu <dandreescu(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

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The terms of use is basically a clickwrap <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickwrap> agreement, right? When you

make

a contribution, you see "by clicking you accept blah blah blah" somewhere, once you click knowing that, you made a sort of contract from a legal

point

of view. So the terms of use only applies to you if you do actually see that piece of text, which does not seem to be present on mediawiki.org, nor on gerrit.wikimedia.org, and obviously not in the git interface when you are pushing a patch.

I agree with this reading, but I also think people like Bartosz will be legitimately confused.

The contributions to mediawiki.org are covered, see the Terms of Use link on every page. That nobody bothered to keep the mediawiki page up to date as compared to other WMF projects is...well, housekeeping. That gerrit.wikimedia.org doesn't seem to have any of the standard footnote links (including the privacy policy, which is perhaps a more significant oversight)...is that because of the interface? One would think a custom skin could be developed that would permit inclusion of such links. Part of the issue faced by developers is the fact that there is really no viable method by which to "label" their contributions as "paid". Doesn't mean the TOU doesn't apply. Risker/Anne

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Brian Wolff

16 Jun 16 Jun

11:34 p.m.

New subject: new terms of use/paid contributions - do they apply to mediawiki

On 6/16/14, Gergo Tisza <gtisza(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

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On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 1:25 PM, Brian Wolff <bawolff(a)gmail.com> wrote:

So from what I understand, there's now been an amendment to WMF's terms of use to require disclosure of paid "contributions" [1]. Its a little unclear how this applies to MediaWiki as a project, but a literal reading of the policy makes it seem like MediaWiki is included. * MediaWiki is arguably a project of the Wikimedia foundation. The foundation's website says as much [2] *A commit/patchset certainly seems like a contribution. Thus the new policy would require anyone submitting code to use to declare who they work for.

The terms of use is basically a clickwrap <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickwrap> agreement, right? When you make a contribution, you see "by clicking you accept blah blah blah" somewhere, once you click knowing that, you made a sort of contract from a legal point of view. So the terms of use only applies to you if you do actually see that piece of text, which does not seem to be present on mediawiki.org, nor on gerrit.wikimedia.org, and obviously not in the git interface when you are pushing a patch. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Perhaps not. But there is a big difference between unenforceable due to lack of notice, and actually not intending the ToU to apply to a specific action. The document itself seems to claim that it applies to the MediaWiki software project (although its not 100% clear). Even if you didn't click it when running git-review, you've probably clicked through it when contributing to some other Wikimedia project. Even if one accepts the interpretation it doesn't apply to code commits as its not linked in the footer of gerrit, I think there's enough ambiguity here that we should do something about it. --bawolff

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Risker

3:47 a.m.

New subject: new terms of use/paid contributions - do they apply to mediawiki

Thank you, Luis. I have drafted a request for comment on mediawiki.org [1], but it can probably use some review to ensure I have included the correct list of related projects. Risker/Anne [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Alternate_disclosure_po… On 16 June 2014 18:25, Luis Villa <lvilla(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

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Hey, all- Our opinion is that the terms of use applies to wikis, and not to non-wiki activities like code contributions. That said, we can understand why this would be confusing, so an opt-out that explicitly lists mediawki code contributions (or even mediawiki as a whole) would be just fine with us. Luis On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 1:25 PM, Brian Wolff <bawolff(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, So from what I understand, there's now been an amendment to WMF's terms of use to require disclosure of paid "contributions" [1]. Its a little unclear how this applies to MediaWiki as a project, but a literal reading of the policy makes it seem like MediaWiki is included. * MediaWiki is arguably a project of the Wikimedia foundation. The foundation's website says as much [2] *A commit/patchset certainly seems like a contribution. Thus the new policy would require anyone submitting code to use to declare who they work for. Personally this seems both unnecessary to me, as well as unlikely to be followed. For example, I see no reason why some person who uses our software should have to declare who they work for when they upstream a bug fix, etc. I would suggest we follow commons' lead [3], and declare that we do not have disclosure requirements for people giving us code. --bawolff [1]

https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Terms_of_Use&diff=0&a…

[2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects [3]

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comment/Alternative…

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-- Luis Villa Deputy General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext. 6810 *This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>.* _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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Antoine Musso

18 Jun 18 Jun

10:55 a.m.

New subject: new terms of use/paid contributions - do they apply to mediawiki

Le 16/06/2014 22:25, Brian Wolff a écrit :

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Thus the new policy would require anyone submitting code to use to declare who they work for. Personally this seems both unnecessary to me, as well as unlikely to be followed. For example, I see no reason why some person who uses our software should have to declare who they work for when they upstream a bug fix, etc.

Hello, If you write the code as an employee of a company during your company work hours, the code legally belong to the company you are working for not to you as an individual. Unless specially stated in your work contract. So in this case, it would make sense to set the proper copyright (your company) or at least have a legal document stating the company grant you a license to do what you want with the code (ie assign the copyright to you as an individual). My personal situation: I, as an individual, generate code that has my copyright though it is done under my own company. I have a legal document with my own company that has all the code belong to me as an individual. I then have a copyright agreement with Wikimedia which establish a joint copyright between the foundation and me. That basically says that the code belong to both of us and is initially published under a free license (ex: GPLv2 / CC-BY-SA). -- Antoine "hashar" Musso

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