John Tobler wrote:

# "Ben Tilly" <ben_tilly / hotmail.com> wrote in message
# news:LAW2-F244U4DYo60bRp00004d93 / hotmail.com...
# > I think it is important to agree on licensing up front.
# > [...snip...]
# > >There are a ways to resolve this issue.  The one I'm leaning towards
# > >is having the site's "Terms of Service" specify that any content
# > >submitted to the site is done under the terms of the GNU Public
# > >License (GPL).
# >
# > Good idea.  Bad choice of license.
# > [...snip...]
# > I also think that it would be good for RAA to set a
# > licensing policy early rather than late.
# 
# Agreed.  I favor the least restrictive license.  Unfortunately, the
# GPL causes some serious difficulties for most potentially-commercial
# users.

Make that a fairly-widely-used less-restrictive license, so that both
contributors and "productizing" users (and backers thereof) will have
lots of allies in case some deep pockets launch legal battering rams
against open source licenses.

Also, you probably need to have a (hopefully very simple) mechanism
whereby contributors certify that they are submitting things that they
believe to not be bound by previous copyrights or any other legal
encumberances (e.g. patents or trade secrets).

How about using the license under which Programming Ruby was 
cyber-charitied to all the world's present and future sentient 
inhabitants?

Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)