Larry Garfield
Sun, 01/06/2008 - 05:48 — Crell
What is your motivation for being a member of the Drupal Association?:
I <3 Drupal, and want to help it succeed. In particular, last year I took part in the initial contact with the Software Freedom Law Center by coordinating our opening questions (http://groups.drupal.org/node/6318) for the SFLC. I am interested in continuing that work, so I am applying for what Dries called a "Legal Affairs Director" on his wishlist (or similar). (He lists that as a BoD position on the chart, so I am filing this application accordingly. Whether that is properly a BoD position I leave to the current members to decide.)
What are the primary goals you would like to work on?:
Right now, there is considerable confusion about Drupal's legal status. Exactly what version of the GPL Drupal and contribs are released under is not clear. That makes integrating with 3rd party systems (like CiviCRM, which is now GPLv3) questionable. There is no tracking of code ownership, so were Drupal to ever end up in copyright litigation (as plaintiff or defendant) it is unclear who exactly would be litigating. If Drupal were to ever need to change or update its license (not immediately, but 5 years from now when GPLv3 is more common?), we do not even know from whom we would need permission as not all patches are of sufficient size as to qualify as copyrightable. Under what circumstances linking or communicating with 3rd party systems is legal was recently hotly debated on the devel list, but not clearly and definitively settled. There's also a lot of misunderstanding about what being under GPLv2, GPLv2+, or GPLv3 actually means.
My primary goal would be to try and get those questions answered, definitively, and published on drupal.org so that we know where we stand, legally. Ideally, they could be settled in a way that gives the Drupal project maximum legal flexibility and defensibility.
What strategy will you employ in order to accomplish said goals?:
1) Work with SFLC and the DA to establish precisely what our current copyright status is. (Trademark is, I believe, adequately clear.)
2) Develop a plan for what we want our legal status to be vis a vis copyright. This would be developed with (hopefully) active community input.
3) Depending on the result of #2, see what we'd need to do in order to implement it. This one is kinda open ended.
4) Ensure that the results of the above are conspicuously documented on Drupal.org as necessary. Work with SFLC to ensure that anything we publish in this respect is legally accurate.
5) Along with #4, a set of guidelines for module developers and consultants for what they can and can't legally do with Drupal should also be published, along with appropriate "this is not legal advice"-type caveats.
What yearly budget would you need in order to accomplish said goals?:
As the SFLC has agreed to offer the DA legal advice pro-bono, I do not anticipate we would need a budget unless we actually ended up in a lawsuit. Naturally, the point of this exercise is to avoid that.
What strengths/experience you have to help you accomplish the goals?:
I will say up front that I am not a lawyer and have no legal training. Long-term, the DA would be better served with an actual lawyer in this role. Until then, I am willing to work on this task.
That said, I am able to read and understand most reasonable legalese, and have almost a decade of experience writing pseudo-legalese for another online community, with emphasis on finding and covering edge cases. (It's an international role playing club populated by nitpickers, so clear-but-complete bylaws documentation is important.) I also didn't get any complaints about my preparation of the original SFLC questions, so I'm assuming that means someone thinks I'm decent at it. :-)
How long have you been using Drupal, and how'd you get your start?:
I first found Drupal while looking for an app framework I could study to learn how to write a plugin-based system myself, and got hooked (pun intended). That was in early to mid-2005. I later used Drupal in some freelance consulting work, and then in early 2007 succeeded in convincing my employer (a web consulting firm) to switch to Drupal as our primary platform. I have been using it daily every since.
Have you made existing community contributions, and if so, what?:
I have submitted or reviewed numerous patches for Drupal core and contribs, ranging from minor to medium in size. I also maintain a half-dozen or so contrib modules. I am a member of the docs team for Drupal.org, and have authored a small number of tutorial and similar pages. I helped organize the initial SFLC questions, and was also one of the key organizers behind the GoPHP5 project. I also periodically troll IRC to provide support.
How much time can you invest in your Drupal Association work?:
8 hours/month
Apply for Board of Directors membership:
Apply for Board of Directors membership
Board of Directors position:
Legal Affairs Director
Statutes:
I have read and understood the Statutes of the Drupal Association. I am prepared to participate by following those statutes.
Comments
I agree in the goal of
I agree in the goal of clarification, but only question the "definitively" adverb. This is law -- copyright law at that, which is in much flux -- so nothing is definitive. But we should be proactive about this.
community outside Drupal
What about community involvement outside of Drupal/PHP?
I know that you contribute a lot inside Drupal but I've enjoyed reading about the community involvement people have outside of the Drupal world.
Lots
I was a co-founder of the Linux Users Group at my university as a freshman, and later served as its President as a senior. It's still quite active on campus.
In my application I mentioned an RPG club that I wanted to build a site for and ended up sucked into Drupal. I've been in that club, an international organization with members in at least 10 countries, for 10 years now, having served in a variety of positions including club President. I am currently the club's Internet Director, meaning sysadmin/programmer, and just this weekend relaunched the club on Drupal: http://www.star-fleet.com/ . Over the years I've also written or ghost-written most of the club's bylaws, mostly because I am a stickler for complete, precise language. I'm not a lawyer, I just play on online. :-)