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Don’t sign a CLA
111–120 of 196 posts
Re: Don’t sign a CLA
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Also, technically if you don't pay for code the copyright holder can revoke the license at any time I'm pretty sure this is a myth.
IANAL but I think it is a grey area. Licenses are contracts, and contracts usually require "consideration", but there is also something called "Promissory Estoppel" which may nullify that. I found out about it from someone on here a while back and went down a rabbit hole googling it.
(Not a lawyer)
The license does have consideration.
You provide some code. The other entity (the project) provides attribution and other things depending on the specific license.
Promissory Estoppel only comes in to play if one side doesn't provide anything of value, and so the bar of consideration isn't met. But to my knowledge, licenses already meet the bar of consideration, so promissory estoppel doesn't matter.
Money isn't the only thing of value. The exchange of one good or service for another good or service is still consideration, no matter what. And "attribution" and "the promise to hold harmless" are of value.
Re: Don’t sign a CLA
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Also, technically if you don't pay for code the copyright holder can revoke the license at any time I'm pretty sure this is a myth.
IANAL but I think it is a grey area. Licenses are contracts, and contracts usually require "consideration", but there is also something called "Promissory Estoppel" which may nullify that. I found out about it from someone on here a while back and went down a rabbit hole googling it.
The consideration with open source licenses is often authorship credit / promotional. It's not terribly different than a band giving away MP3's of their music: maybe they want to share their music with the world, maybe they want you to buy a ticket to their concert, but they are getting something out of it and are free to give away something if they have the rights to do so.
Re: Don’t sign a CLA
#114It's a great point to be aware of, but the title and the tone implies that you as a contributor should be a FOSS maximalist. As they say, not all open source is FOSS. And some people are OK with that. Let them contribute, as long as they are aware of the implications. When I discover bugs in open-source projects during my day job (which is on a closed-source project), I will be much happier having those fixes merged…
Author here. Thanks for writing up your thoughts. >As they say, not all open source is FOSS This isn't true - you mean "not all open source is copyleft". >> Free and open source software licenses grant explicit freedoms to three groups: the maintainers, the users, and the contributors. >This is not the case of all open source licenses This is also not true. You should review the open source definition: https://openso…
>> As they say, not all open source is FOSS
> This isn't true - you mean "not all open source is copyleft".
Yes it is, and I'm not sure the commenter does. Software may be free but not open-source, and it may be open-source but not free. The term "free and open-source" signifies both.
> This is also not true. You should review the open source definition:
That is not the definition of open-source (or even "open source"), a common term for software the source code of which is available; it is the Open Source Definition, a copyrighted work published by The Open Source Initiative.
Contrary to the confusing rhetoric of the Open Source Initiative, they have no claim on how anyone uses common words in the English language like open and source. Putting the two together is trivial. Open-source is an adjective referring to the fact that that source code is available. It need not refer to some particular organization's ideology.
Re: Don’t sign a CLA
#115I think it depends entirely on the purpose of the CLA. Different licenses say different things. Some merely assert that the signer is contributing under the license under which the project is distributed. (Although you may consider it obvious, I am not aware of any existing case law in the US that asserts that submitting a patch necessarily comes with a grant of license to the copyright. And I can guarantee that ther…
Some even protect the contributors:
> [1]: You may provide support for free, for a fee, or not at all. Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, You provide Your Contributions on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied, including, without limitation, any warranties or conditions of TITLE, NON- INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
[1] Khan Academy CLA: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdyXYrc8ogVoA46J9KX...
Re: Don’t sign a CLA
#116It's a great point to be aware of, but the title and the tone implies that you as a contributor should be a FOSS maximalist. As they say, not all open source is FOSS. And some people are OK with that. Let them contribute, as long as they are aware of the implications. When I discover bugs in open-source projects during my day job (which is on a closed-source project), I will be much happier having those fixes merged…
>> Free and open source software licenses grant explicit freedoms to three groups: the maintainers, the users, and the contributors. > This is not the case of all open source licenses. And that is fine. Don't assume all my work has to be part of your crusade. Indeed, I've contributed to one open source project with a CLA, it had an Apache v2 license... So It didn't really seem to make any practical difference to that…
> Has anyone seen GPL+CLA in the wild?
Does FSF copyright assignment count? They do that on many of their projects (including Emacs).
Re: Don’t sign a CLA
#117An interesting contrast among FOSS maximalists is that the FSF requires a CLA for a subset of its projects: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html
I think the FSF gets a pass here, given that the GPL has explicit protections against the negative behaviors warned about in the article.
I can see your point of view, though one nitpick: the GPL doesn't prevent shenanigans any more than an MIT license. With a CLA, the owners can relicense the code as a non-open source license. With both MIT or GPL, you retain the rights to develop the previously released code.
It's the FSF's commitment (mentioned upthread) to not do that which arguably makes it safe to sign a CLA with the FSF.
Re: Don’t sign a CLA
#118[deleted]
Re: Don’t sign a CLA
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Good faith" and by extension "bad faith" are quasi-legal terms. To do business in good faith is to act by the letter and spirit of terms without an intention of attempting to defraud. As I understand it, someone who acts in Good faith usually has more leniency then someone who acts in bad faith. For instance, I had a friend who upon leaving an apartment building was charged several hundred dollars for maintenance ha…
I see. Thank you. So the question is, are they acting in bad faith if they attempt to use a CLA to subvert the open source license?
I think the point is to assume good faith on the contributer's side, i.e. that they will follow in the letter and spirit of the OS license, so a CLA is unnecessary. Conversely, by putting a CLA in place, the subtext is "I think you're probably a scumbag (=person acting in bad faith) and don't trust the OS licenses used for billions of lines of code, so I'm going to hit you with a CLA preemptively".
As an interesting bit of context, the European legal system skews more towards the spirit of the law, allowing for shorter legal documents/contracts. Whereas the US legal system skews towards the letter of the law, meaning contracts end up being several hundred pages, littered by garbage like "including but not limited to", and things like that.
Re: Don’t sign a CLA
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Also, technically if you don't pay for code the copyright holder can revoke the license at any time I'm pretty sure this is a myth.
IANAL but I think it is a grey area. Licenses are contracts, and contracts usually require "consideration", but there is also something called "Promissory Estoppel" which may nullify that. I found out about it from someone on here a while back and went down a rabbit hole googling it.
In addition to that, "consideration" doesn't have to mean "money" — in fact, consideration usually won't be monetary on at least one side of the contract (e.g. if I offer you $5 to mow my lawn, the lawnmowing is consideration). If your license requires people to give you attribution, that could reasonably be viewed as consideration.
(IANAL and obviously this comes with the usual truck full of caveats that all legal issues do, but this is my understanding of the general state of US law at least.)