RFC: Properly stated origin of code contributions

[Joachim Breitner]

Hi,


Am Donnerstag, den 30.10.2014, 09:04 -0400 schrieb Brandon Allbery:
> On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 5:00 AM, Jan Stolarek <jan.stolarek at p.lodz.pl>
> 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 at joachim-breitner.de • http://www.joachim-breitner.de/
  Jabber: nomeata at joachim-breitner.de  • GPG-Key: 0xF0FBF51F
  Debian Developer: nomeata at debian.org

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