Re: RFC: Properly stated origin of code contributions

Hi, Am Donnerstag, den 30.10.2014, 09:04 -0400 schrieb Brandon Allbery:

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 5:00 AM, Jan Stolarek wrote: Projects like Scala and Clojure require filling in a "Contributor [License] Agreement". I have not bothered to investigate the exact purpose.

In the absence of a license agreement, the contribution is usually owned by the submitter and not the project (copyright, see Berne convention). This doesn't scale very well. A signed CLA allows the project to demonstrate that the submitter has agreed to transfer ownership of the contribution to the project('s administrators).

Given that the Linux kernel doesn’t require (paper-signed) CLAs, I do think it scales very well, and does not seem to scare off commercial users.

In the absence of a license agreement, the contribution is usually owned by the submitter and not the project (copyright, see Berne convention). This doesn't scale very well. A signed CLA allows the project to demonstrate that the submitter has agreed to transfer ownership of the contribution to the project('s administrators).

As long we can properly assume that contributors license the code to us under the terms of the GHC license (which we seem to do), we got what we need. No need to hold the copyright in a single place. It’s too late for that anyways. Please avoid introducing unnecessary bureaucracy into the contributing process, especially not due to legal fear, cased from FUD and smattering. Greetings, Joachim -- Joachim “nomeata” Breitner mail@joachim-breitner.de • http://www.joachim-breitner.de/ Jabber: nomeata@joachim-breitner.de • GPG-Key: 0xF0FBF51F Debian Developer: nomeata@debian.org