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Don’t sign a CLA

drewdevault.com

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Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#191

Post by rimliu »

newacctjhro wrote: post #188
zaroth wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh well, if you say so! The point is the adjective is commonly used imprecisely, despite a minority’s desire for it to be only used to describe a precise circumstance. Genie, meet bottle.

This confusion/imprecision is only common among non-technical people. When a software project describes themselves as open source, in the overwhelming majority of cases they actually mean this https://opensource.org/osd-annotated

Can you back up the claim “overwhelming majority” with numbers or some studies?

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#192

Post by vsl »

The point is somewhat ruined by getting major facts about licensing and Redis wrong:

1. It was about proprietary addons, not community version at all. 2. The license of Redis would allow such relicensing of externally contributed code without CLA. Read the damn BSD license, that permissiveness is its whole point.

20 years ago, OSS developers understood their licenses. These days, it seems common that people slam a random license on their code or contribute somewhere with absolutely no functional understanding of the legal aspects.

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#193

Post by justincormack »

mikeash wrote: post #179
justincormack wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

1. Its a good idea, if you are going to use licensed code that you have an understanding of the law and what it actually means when you use other people's code.

2. As the code is not relicensed you have to follow the terms. Generally for example even BSD licensed code (other than BSD0) requires that you include attribution both in source code and binaries or documentation, so you need to keep a full list of licenses and authors and list them out in the docs.

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#194

Post by linkmotif »

guitarbill wrote: post #119
linkmotif wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you for the additional context.

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#195

Post by Communitivity »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #48
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…

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? Most non-copyleft open-source licenses have their own requirements that must be followed even when re-licensing. Also, technically if you don't pay for code the copyright holder can revoke the lice…

IANAL, but this is a generalization and not true in all cases. I think they might be able to try to force you not to use your own code if, and only if, the CLA requires you to assign copyright to the project. I think it would still be on shaky ground, as you could reimplement what you did and be fine. You as copyright holder have the right to re-release code you solely hold the copyright to under any license. I will sign a CLA that requires me to affirm I have the right to contribute the code, but I will not sign one that requires me to assign copyright, unless I am getting paid (in which case it becomes a work for hire).

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#196

Post by JdeBP »

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).

Incorrect, as I just explained.
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