New LDraw.org Contributer's Agreement

[Orion Pobursky]

All,

A new Contributor's agreement has been agreed upon by the SteerCo. The text is as follows:

By submitting work ("the Work") to The LDraw Organization ("LDraw.org"), the submitter ("the Author"), agrees to release the Work under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License ("CC BY 4.0").

The human readable and legal text of the CC BY 4.0 license can be found at this link:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

If you are reading this, you have, at a minimum, Parts Tracker submit privileges. While it is not required, I ask that all of you email [email protected] with the following:

"I accept the LDraw.org Contributor's Agreement dated 23-Feb-2022 with regards to all past and future contributions I make to LDraw.org".

There is some documentation and coding to do so the expected implementation of the CC BY 4.0 license will be the May or July update. I will not be suspending accounts or anything like that to enforce agreement (although expect an email nag from me if I don't hear from you) as the CC BY 2.0 is fine for us but it has some legal baggage that we want to avoid hence the revision.

Thank you and thank you for making the LDraw library what it is.

[Orion Pobursky]

New CA FAQs:

Why did we revise the CA?
The CC BY 2.0 license has so legal baggage that we wish to avoid. While we are in compliance with that license, we don't want human error to potentially cause problems.

Do I have to agree to the new CA?
No, your submissions will continue to be covered under the CC BY 2.0 license. However, we politely ask that you allow us to address any concerns you have and ultimately agree to the new CA. Additionally, past the implementation date, you only be allowed to submit new alterations to parts that only you have edited (i.e. new parts authored by you)

What about authors who cannot be contacted to agree to the new CA?
As above, their submissions will continue to be covered under the CC BY 2.0 license.

How will I know which parts are covered by what license?
While the detail are still being worked out, there will most likely be a new LICENSE meta and optional tag on HISTORY metas to signify what derivatives are covered under which license