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Don’t sign a CLA

drewdevault.com

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Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#171

Post by SSLy »

VonGuard wrote: post #83
lmm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I did not say that, nor do I believe it, nor is it really related. What is the practical difference between contributing under a CLA to a project that's currently under an open-source license and contributing under a non-copyleft open-source license while retaining the copyright yourself? In both cases the project's ability to "go closed source" seems substantially the same, so it seems to me that your arguments ag…

CLA's basically do one thing: Protect the company using them from being sued by a contributor, or from being sued if a contributor copy pastes copyrighted code into the project. They're there to protect corporations that have outside contributors to projects they build and sell, typically. Sometimes, they're fine, like if you signed one to work on some obscure Linux driver for an obscure hardware item: the hardware c…

There's nothing awful about AGPL if you consider it a form of expressing protest.

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#172

Post by eridius »

eikenberry wrote: post #162
nulbyte wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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: > https://opensource.org/osd That is not the definition of open…

> Software may be free but not open-source, and it may be open-source but not free. Free and Open source software are basically mean to be synonyms, the latter being put forth by people to eliminate the ambiguity in English about the use of the word Free. The "free" in "free software" means libre software, not gratis software. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

The fact that "free" in this context means libre is precisely why "free" and "open-source" are distinct concepts, and why you can have something that's "open-source but not free", and even "free but not open-source" (which in this case would basically mean you have a binary rather than source, but you're free to do whatever you want with it; you don't have the source so it's a lot harder to modify, but not impossible, and if you did modify it you'd be perfectly free to distribute that or relicense it or whatever else you want). I know the GNU defines "free" as requiring access to the source code, but that's just their opinion.

Tangential rant: "Copyleft" licenses aren't actually free. The GNU claims they are, that the restrictions that copyleft licenses add don't conflict with the "central freedoms" but simply protects them. But they do restrict my freedom. If a piece of source was truly free, I should be allowed to make significant modifications and sell the resulting software (without giving out the source). Copyleft expressly prohibits this. I get that the GNU is dreaming of a utopia in which all software is open source and "free" and nobody ever makes closed-source software or charges for software. But we don't live in that utopia, and we probably never will; the closest we'll come is when we hit a post-scarcity society and do away with money, so no more keeping software closed-source in order to sell it, but there will still be reasons to keep software closed-source other than wanting to charge money for it. But I digress. The point is, Copyleft licenses rather significantly restrict my freedom as a developer. I'm not trying to debate as to whether or not that restriction is a good thing, just taking issue with calling the result "freedom".

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#173

Post by btilly »

JdeBP wrote: post #110
btilly wrote: post #93

As a counterpoint, read https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html where the GNU project explains why they require copyright assignments. And their stated issues are not trivial. I have personally run into a few cases where people thought that they owned their work, but actually it was owned by their employer. I don't have to look very far - it happened to me personally when I lived in New York. (Not entirely co…

Or read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18149011 here where it is argued out that a copyright assignment is not the same thing as a contributor licence agreement.

No, a copyright assignment is not the same thing as a contributor license agreement. Copyright assignment is in all respects that this article cares about even worse.

Therefore the fact that one of the most extreme software freedom organizations out there argues for copyright assignments is very telling.

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#174

Post by LocalH »

syrrim wrote: post #19
Legogris wrote: post #4

It'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…

>not all open source is FOSS >This is not the case of all open source licenses. false. open source is literally just a friendlier name and otherwise rebranding of free software. all open source is free software and all free software is open source. if you are contributing to FOSS qua FOSS, then you want it to remain FOSS. FOSS refers to that software which guarantees your right to change it, so if you are making chan…

Not all open source is free software. I'm certain there exists code to which you can legally gain access (thus the source is "open"), that is not "free software" (in other words, under a license that has clauses incompatible with "free software").

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#175

Post by craigsmansion »

dllthomas wrote: post #152
Legogris wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't necessarily referring to the author here, it is more of a straw-man really. Could have worded that better.

I interpreted the comment above as speaking of Stallman's positions, not the author's. I still suspect that's the case, although I now see that there's ambiguity I missed on first read.

I did refer to rms with "he", as I found it hard to believe rms would refer to non-GPL Free Software licenses as "evil", but the OP already admitted it was a straw-man either way.

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#176

Post by justincormack »

mikeash wrote: post #136
JdeBP wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it is you that have the bizarre idea. BSD licences do not permit people relicensing code without permission of the copyright holder. Copyright licences cannot do so. No copyright licence could do this. To do this, the actual copyright ownership has to be transferred. A copyright licence is a grant of permission by a copyright owner who retains that ownership . It is not a transfer of ownership. * http://usc…

You don't need ownership to relicense. You just need a license which permits relicensing, which BSD does (as long as the new license is compatible, and they usually are).

It does not permit relicensing. You may use it in an aggregate work with other pieces that have a different license, including proprietary or GPL, but that does not mean your code is relicensed.

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#177

Post by NO_CHANGE »

eridius wrote: post #172
eikenberry wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software may be free but not open-source, and it may be open-source but not free. Free and Open source software are basically mean to be synonyms, the latter being put forth by people to eliminate the ambiguity in English about the use of the word Free. The "free" in "free software" means libre software, not gratis software. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

The fact that "free" in this context means libre is precisely why "free" and "open-source" are distinct concepts, and why you can have something that's "open-source but not free", and even "free but not open-source" (which in this case would basically mean you have a binary rather than source, but you're free to do whatever you want with it; you don't have the source so it's a lot harder to modify, but not impossible…

You're saying you're not free to change the licence of open source software, rather than not free to change the source code to it.

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#178

Post by v_lisivka »

eridius wrote: post #172
eikenberry wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software may be free but not open-source, and it may be open-source but not free. Free and Open source software are basically mean to be synonyms, the latter being put forth by people to eliminate the ambiguity in English about the use of the word Free. The "free" in "free software" means libre software, not gratis software. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

The fact that "free" in this context means libre is precisely why "free" and "open-source" are distinct concepts, and why you can have something that's "open-source but not free", and even "free but not open-source" (which in this case would basically mean you have a binary rather than source, but you're free to do whatever you want with it; you don't have the source so it's a lot harder to modify, but not impossible…

But Copyleft license significantly increases my freedom as a developer. I can develop software for customer#1, then use same software with customer#2, and so on. It's free.

It's like "those people told me that they are free, but I cannot sell them, so in reality they are non-free".

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#179

Post by mikeash »

justincormack wrote: post #176
mikeash wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need ownership to relicense. You just need a license which permits relicensing, which BSD does (as long as the new license is compatible, and they usually are).

It does not permit relicensing. You may use it in an aggregate work with other pieces that have a different license, including proprietary or GPL, but that does not mean your code is relicensed.

Is there an actual difference there, or is this just semantics?

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#180

Post by eridius »

v_lisivka wrote: post #178
eridius wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that "free" in this context means libre is precisely why "free" and "open-source" are distinct concepts, and why you can have something that's "open-source but not free", and even "free but not open-source" (which in this case would basically mean you have a binary rather than source, but you're free to do whatever you want with it; you don't have the source so it's a lot harder to modify, but not impossible…

But Copyleft license significantly increases my freedom as a developer. I can develop software for customer#1, then use same software with customer#2, and so on. It's free. It's like "those people told me that they are free, but I cannot sell them, so in reality they are non-free".

You could develop software for customer#1 and use the same software for customer#2 with a non-Copyleft license too. The question isn't "does the license enforce that the source must be distributed", it's "will the customer allow me to release the work as open source to begin with". About the only way Copyleft applies here is if you can make a strong case that the work customer#1 wants you to do necessitates (or would be much more expensive without) using a piece of copyleft-licensed source, and therefore the whole work must be covered under a copyleft license. But as a developer with a long work history I've never hit that case, or personally know anyone who has.

Really about the only scenario I can think of where I'd reasonably expect to hit this case is if I were tasked with building the software stack for some kind of appliance that would be greatly simplified by throwing Linux on there. And even then, the custom software running as a process on the box would presumably not have to be Copyleft-licensed, just any changes to the Kernel or any other bundled GPL'd software would have to be made available (if in fact there are any changes), and if GPLv3 is involved then the box would have to have some way for the user to replace the software (but the Linux Kernel is GPLv2 so that may not be an issue).

Barring that scenario, if your idea is "I'll develop something for customer#1 and slap the GPL license on it, then customer#1 has no choice but to release the source and I can reuse it for customer#2", unfortunately that's incorrect. Work done for hire is owned by the employer, not the employee, so you can't slap the GPL license on work you do for customer#1 unless customer#1 authorizes it. And in fact if the entire work is built in-house (rather than pulling in GPL'd libraries), then it doesn't even matter if you claim that it's GPL'd because the customer would be the sole copyright owner and would be able to relicense it. The only reason they couldn't relicense it is if it pulls in third-party GPL'd code or libraries, but if I were customer#1 and I hired a developer who pulled in GPL'd libraries without permission in order to try and force the entire work to be released as open source, you can bet I'd be firing that developer on the spot.

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