Do Read: Diaspora Contributor Agreement

We wrote last week about Diaspora, the open source social network designed to offer privacy to users who are fed up with Facebook's regular policy changes and the threat of privacy violation. Last week, the site and its code went live for developers, but for those out there ready to dive into the social networking platform should take note: A few passage from the Contributor Agreement have members of the open source community concerned.

You hereby assign to us joint ownership, and to the extent that such assignment is or becomes invalid, ineffective or unenforceable, you hereby grant to us a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, worldwide, no-charge, royalty-free, unrestricted license to exercise all rights under those copyrights. This includes, at our option, the right to sublicense these same rights to third parties through multiple levels of sublicensees or other licensing arrangements;

You agree that each of us can do all things in relation to your contribution as if each of us were the sole owners, and if one of us makes a derivative work of your contribution, the one who makes the derivative work (or has it made) will be the sole owner of that derivative work.

And later:

With respect to any patents you own, or that you can license without payment to any third party, you hereby grant to us a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, worldwide, no-charge, royalty-free license to: (i) make, have made, use, sell, offer to sell, import, and otherwise transfer your contribution in whole or in part, alone or in combination with or included in any product, work or materials arising out of the project to which your contribution was submitted; and (ii) at our option, to sublicense these same rights to third parties through multiple levels of sublicensees or other licensing arrangements.

In short, Diaspora can take and use any contributions at the company's choosing and can sublicense the contribution to other parties. If someone at Diaspora makes a piece of software or code based on a developer-submitted contribution, the derived work is owned entirely by the person who made it. Nowhere with the document does it specify what qualifies as a derived work.

In the agreement, Diaspora also makes it a point to mention that with the exception of the above clauses, all rights and titles are reserved for the contributor. The company also agrees to release any contributions licensed under a suitable Free Software Foundation-approved license.

The full terms can be read here.