[awards-program] Lawyers will join us on Monday

[Ben Rockwood]

Teresa Giacomini wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> So we don't need to be going back and forth so much, the lawyers 
> drafting the official rules will join us on our Monday call to discuss 
> all our remaining questions on the contest rules.  They are working on 
> the grant program rules and should get those to us by early next week.  
> We will have another concall with them later in the week to discuss those.
>   



Excellent!

If I should, for some unforeseen reason, be unable to be on the call 
Monday, my big concern is with Section 10 of the rules, namely the 
repeating lines such as "Acceptance of a prize constitutes an assignment 
of all rights, title and interest in their winning SubmissionEntry to 
Sponsor and, if necessary, will sign any documents within thirty (30) 
days of winner notification to confirm the transfer at Sponsor’s request."

These statements are unclear and in direct conflict with open source 
ideals. It was suggested by James and Alta that these lines were likely 
"yanked" from some prior conract and the fact that "Sponsor" is never 
legally defined in the document supports that.

The spirit of open source states, and is enforced by license, that the 
IP creator always retains ownership, however she provides any and all 
rights to anyone who agrees to the license (GPL, CDDL, etc).

In ensense, section 10 says to me, that if you win a prize Sun bought 
the winning entries; which means this isn't a contest, its a very clever 
software auction.

benr.