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Don’t sign a CLA

drewdevault.com

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Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#51

Post by sparkie »

tomxor wrote: post #42
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…

>> 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…

Mono used to have a CLA to Novell. There were GPL and LGPL parts. It turned out to be beneficial because it enabled Xamarin (made up of mono developers) to acquire licensing rights to redistribute and relicense it after Novell dropped support for the project.

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#52

Post by akerl_ »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #32
hyperpape wrote: post #17

An 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.

Wouldn't your article then more accurately be "Don't sign a CLA without reading it and making sure you agree with what it says", which reduces pretty cleanly to "Don't sign things unless you've read them and agree with them"?

Your overall point seems to be one I agree with, which is "CLAs can be (and often are) used to enable maintainers to make decisions that contributors wouldn't want to be made, and contributors should thus be careful in what they agree to", but in making it an imperative headline it's lost the nuance.

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#53

Post by Legogris »

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…

I don't know about where you are, but in my jurisdiction that is definitely not the case.

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#54

Post by dllthomas »

Legogris wrote: post #31
syrrim wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> false. open source is literally just a friendlier name and otherwise rebranding of free software. This is not how anyone I have ever talked to thinks about it. You are probably confusing Free Software[0] with open source software[1]. If you still hold your point we are arguing semantics and stating that your interpretation (a minority interpretation) is right and that most of the software industry and open source c…

"Literally just a friendlier name" is more-or-less the OSI's spin on the split; those remaining with the FSF were concerned about a shift of focus away from principles. (With the obvious caveat that these are generalizations about a lot of individuals.)

But in practical terms, "free software" and "open source software" as used by the FSF and the OSI describe the same set of software. Consider their respective license lists:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#55

Post by crdoconnor »

rqs wrote: post #12
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…

> the title and the tone implies that you as a contributor should be a FOSS maximalist. But what if somebody was changed the license from BSD to proprietary after you've contributed to the project? Would you still be happy about it then? I think the idea was: I have my code contributed under BSD, so you cannot re-license my code without clearance from me.

>But what if somebody was changed the license from BSD to proprietary after you've contributed to the project? Would you still be happy about it then?

If you signed a CLA then presumably you're either happy about it or you've just signed a contract you had literally zero understanding of.

If you're more concerned about getting your fix in upstream or the kudos that comes with being a committer to "x project" then yeah, you probably wouldn't mind.

I personally view Microsoft's use of CLAs as a trap that highlights just how disingenuous their "turning over a new open source leaf" was but I don't really have a problem with open source projects using them in general. The maximalist approach to open source would mean a lot of really great open source would never get written. Authors have gotta eat.

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#56

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

lmm wrote: post #44
ddevault wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

The GPL family of licenses certainly provides the strongest guarantees to the contributor. But let's consider a "weak" license like MIT. Here's the text to refresh your memory:

https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

If you change the license, all of the original work must still be distributed under MIT and only the work done after the cutover can use a new license. The GPL differs in that the new work must also be licensed as GPL.

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#57

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

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…

>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.

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#58

Post by Boulth »

DannyBee wrote: post #47

"What the CLA is actually used for is to give the project maintainers the ability to relicense your work under a more restrictive software license, up to and including making it entirely closed source." Actually, it serves two main purposes[1] : 1. Protect the project from people who don't actually have the necessary rights to be contributing or wish to retract contributions later. This is the most common case, and i…

Wouldn't Developer Certificate of Origin serve the same purpose? Especially for projects with Apache 2 licence.

As far as I can see DCO is more lightweight but doesn't allow relicensing like CLA.

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#59

Post by mixedCase »

tomxor wrote: post #42
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…

>> 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…

Yes, Qt: https://www1.qt.io/contributionagreement/

Re: Don’t sign a CLA

#60

Post by 2ion »

In my spare time / hobby projects, I'm ready to don my FOSS advocate hat, but as a businessman and employee, I'm practically ignoring all issues with the lack of F in OSS. Many thanks to those who can afford to live by their ideals even when it comes to earning a living, though, and much respect for being willing to deal with this kind of stuff all the time.
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