Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: Template contract for OpenACS projects
First, the content of the future statement of the community standards is not decided upon yet, so how potential clients might react to my particular initial draft (which I don't think much of myself) doesn't say much about their attitude towards the actual thing.
Second, what we are trying to produce is a statement that refers to such projects that result in code going into the OpenACS toolkit, so any other type of projects (however commercially important to you) are quite irrelevant in this connection.
Third, no potential client in such a project will be compelled to sign any business contract containing the readymade statement, but they are free to do so if they find it to be a handy service in their quest for good relations with the OpenACS community.
From this we conclude, with a sigh of relief, that there is absolutely no need for us to worry about how potential clients that are hostile to the open source ideal would react if forced to agree to the exact statements in my initial draft. This is not even a possible scenario.
This leaves us discussing such OpenACS-friendly clients as MIT, Heidelberg, and Greenpeace. You seem to be supposing that mature institutions like these, in their business relations with professional developers, feel uncomfortable adhering to explicit rules, and that they would rather keep agreements informal - and thus uncontrollable and unenforceable. Perhaps you suggest they are most content when they can just seal a deal with loose promises and a firm handshake.
If you were to study the contracts that Collaboraid have signed with these institutions, I'm convinced you'd find that they are full of (legal) terms and provisions stating what you were supposed to perform in order to make your clients happy. And I'm also convinced that if you hadn't performed so darn well, these loveable institutions would have pointed to the contract to show you that the job performed didn't meet the professional standard that was agreed upon. It would be their right and their responsibility to do so.
The underlying tone in your posts is a surprisingly anarchistic (or naive) one: that explicit rules represent a failure and shouldn't have to exist among friends. The GPL states explicit rules, but because its spirit is that of "freedom" you disregard the fact that it is as dictating as any other legal contract. It seems that you don't like the idea of being tied to the mast. Yet those who let themselves be tied to the mast - or demand to be, like Odysseus (Ulysses) in Homer's Odyssey - do so to free themselves from harm.
When business parties negotiate and sign legal contracts or agreements between them this is not because they are stiff and boring and don't like to be friendly with the people they work with, but because they like to stay friendly with them when conflicts appear. Professionalism is not something people escape to when they can't establish friendly relationships with others, but something they embrace because it improves the work process as well as its results.
Forgive me, I feel really patronizing explaining this to you. As part of a true quality company you surely know this, so I don't see why you choose to suppose that a legal statement that is not only a contract with the company performing the work but also with the community accepting the work is something that would repel clients. Indeed, it would provide the best guarantee that the project is conducted in a professional way that enforces the good relationship with the community no matter what company the client turns to. A quality seal.
