Re: [hackers] Licensing status of patches

From: Daniel Littlewood <danielittlewood_AT_gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2020 09:04:32 +0100

Dear Laslo,

> as far as I know, there's no need for a CLA. CLAs are just a
> simplification that contributors waive their rights to the code to the
> legal entity behind the project so the license file is not littered
> with 100s of people but only the legal entity. Which license you're
> using doesn't matter here. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

My argument that the GPL is simpler here is that in the "default case"
where changes are simply submitted without the contributor talking
about licensing, the project as a whole is not covered by the given
license (only those contributions which have explicitly agreed to it).
For small projects, or projects hosted on Github, this is no problem.

But if, some time later, a user decides they want to fork the project,
simply seeing that the project is free is not enough to guarantee they
can use it. They need to see either something like a CLA (which may
cede the copyright to the maintainer, or simply agree that their
contributions inherit the parent license), or an explicit statement
from every contributor agreeing to license their changes under a free
license.

So whether it's a "need" or a "simplification" is a matter of
perspective - I only think it would matter for projects above a
certain size. But the need to get access to downstream changes of your
own project is one of the motivating factors behind the GPL - I
believe Linus cites it as his motivation for choosing it for Linux.

Hope that helps,
Daniel

On Thu, Oct 1, 2020 at 7:36 AM Laslo Hunhold <dev_AT_frign.de> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 30 Sep 2020 19:06:32 +0100
> Daniel Littlewood <danielittlewood_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Daniel,
>
> > I am wary of going too far off topic, but I think a convincing
> > argument against the use of "permissive" licenses like MIT is that if
> > your project grows above a certain size, it necessitates CLAs in
> > addition to a license. If you do not use a platform like GitHub who
> > guarantees that inbound=outbound, then you don't necessarily have a
> > right to your contributors' changes, which I'm sure could be painful.
> > Sure, it's an unlikely situation, but so are most pathological
> > behaviours that necessitate a license.
>
> as far as I know, there's no need for a CLA. CLAs are just a
> simplification that contributors waive their rights to the code to the
> legal entity behind the project so the license file is not littered
> with 100s of people but only the legal entity. Which license you're
> using doesn't matter here. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
>
> With best regards
>
> Laslo
>
Received on Thu Oct 01 2020 - 10:04:32 CEST