Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the linked post > It is also clear that the .NET Foundation project governance model is not well understood. Project maintainers sign an agreement that either assigns or contributes their project to the .NET Foundation. That’s the point at which project ownership changes. We’ll post another document on that this week as well. This apology claims project ownership was assigned and the parent poster claims that th…
> "either assigns or contributes" That wording (from the post) is unfortunate because it is misleading, but that doesn't mean we should continue to spread the misinterpretation. Please stop conflating "project ownership" with "copyright assignment". > the CLAs shared by the contributors differ from the sample one you have linked. I got that PDF by going to https://cla.dotnetfoundation.org/ and then clicking through t…
What else is there to own in an open source project? The trademarks? How many of these projects even have trademarks?
> I got that PDF by going to https://cla.dotnetfoundation.org/ and then clicking through the link to the CLA.
This is the document that the .NET foundation requires new contributors to projects owned by the .NET foundation to sign. Ok. But it's not the document that the owners of these projects signed as part of opening relations with the foundation, at least by the project owners claims and provided screenshot. The .NET foundation could plaster this document on their home page, but it doesn't change that the project authors are providing a different document that they claim is the one they signed.
The document that the project authors claim to have signed includes this modified intro:
> Project means the projects owned or managed by Contributor and listed below that is assigned to the .NET foundation hereunder.
If this is assigning copyright to the .NET foundation, is it bad faith to not make that clearer? Yes. Is it a reason not to do business with the .NET foundation? Yes. Does the fact that the later sections of the document discuss copyright licenses make their claim less credible? Yes. But I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to pass judgement on if it does what the .NET foundation claims, merely discuss the point that the foundation now claims it does so, and other posters have claimed that kind of assignment is needed for a foundation to operate.
Please stop attacking me for trying to discuss the situation without using your preferred description exactly. I'm trying to present both sides claims in a discussion that it is not required for the .NET to do what they claim based on the examples of other foundations which have managed without such a step.