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Re: Why not contribute? (to GCC)
> And how are potential contributors supposed to know this?
They're really not. The fundamental problem here is that this area of
the law is not only very complicated, but is really all guesswork
since there are few, if any, relevant cases. Moreover, this is an
area of the law where details matter, often quite a bit.
My suggestion for this process is develop an online form where a
person specifies various things about their contribution including
what program it's for an how long it is. It should ask whether the
person anticipates submitting more changes. Then it needs to ask what
the person's employment status is and in which country. It should ask
about terms relating to IPR in any employment agreements. And so on.
Then it should be able to come up with a set of choices that would
cover this person's unique situation.
That is more or less what a potentional contributor gets via email
when submitting a patch. I don't see how a web form would make things
different.