Partnership comments

[Muhammad Alkarouri <malkarouri at yahoo dot co dot uk>]

Salam,

First, thanks for the mailing list and the documents. They certainly do
help a lot.

Some comments on the partnership doc:

- It is difficult to get a good wording on A.1 about free/open software
projects. The current wording would make a license like M$ shared
source, in which the source is available and you can echo changes to M$,
within the definition. I don't think we mean that, so we need to change
the wording to something that enables us to fork when appropriate.
I suggest:
'Arabeyes will only contribute to Free/Open Software Projects in which
source-code or any other relevant results are available to the general
public at no charge and in which changes and modifications are allowed
to be distributed and/or are echoed back the original author(s)'
It is definitely not the best, but you get the idea.
Another choice, for consistency with the current version of the
standards document, is using the same definition as in point 1 there,
i.e. under OSI-approved licenses and definitions. This is probably much
better.

- Statement at end of B.1: The monetary involvement
In my view, this is directly a kind of dictating action to the third
party, which runs counter to the soul of the document and of A.1.
Monetary involvement between the third party and its own employees need
not be declared. In fact, it should not be declared. It is just like you
asking me what is your salary. In fact, this automatically also means
disclosure of all people working for the third party in the project,
which I don't perceive as needed.
For example, if Yoyodyne company wants to undertake a project with us to
translate for example all of NetBSD, they shouldn't be obliged to
disclose the names of their people working on this, nor their internal
contracts.
That being said, any member of Arabeyes who works for a third party in a
joint project with Arabeyes has to declare on what basis is his/her
participation, paid or otherwise rewarded.

- Point B.5: Communication
What does '3rd party contributors' here mean? All points mentioned here
are of course applicable to the contact-points, but I wouldn't expect
that all 3rd party contributors are to commit work, and I am not sure if
this would help us either.
Taking Munzir's case as an example, he mentioned that his people are not
well versed in using CVS. I guess this is solved by the (barring any
technical extremes) exception. However, this does not include the need
to review every contribution from the third party by their legal
department/QA department, which may mean controlled access to the
outside world, so all commits may come from one person. Is this case
included?

- Point C.2: Attached Donations
Surely it is a bit extreme. If almawrid dictionary wants to donate to
word list or qamoose, need it find a third project for choice given that
its interests are only in these areas? Assuming that a faculty of
mathematical sciences wants to donate to Bayani, should it find a new
mathematical relation in ITL and discover its interest in the
mathematical aspects of bicon to donate? What if a company wants to
donate servers?

-Point C.3: Attached Individual Donations
I would rename this as 'Attached Donations to Individuals' or another
suitable name because I first understood it as an attached donation as
in C.2 made by an individual.

Salam,
Muhammad Alkarouri