OSI-approved license that assigns contributor copyright to me

[David Barrett]

Brian Behlendorf wrote:
> I thought David was looking for a way to be able to incorporate 
> contributions into his works legally without having to execute a lot of 
> paperwork, so I thought section 5 was appropriate to mention, as it is 
> not a common clause in Open Source licenses, and is definitely different 
> than what you say in your first paragraph above.

I agree, it's an interesting clause that gives me a good place to start; 
thanks for pointing it out.


> Further, I am not sure whether your negation immediately above is 
> accurately stated - in the case of the Apache license, the Contribution 
> can go into an Apache licensed work. Then, that new work can be 
> sublicensed under any license that follows the requirements of Apache's 
> license - and that new license may very well be a proprietary license. 

Basically my goal is to enable me to re-license the code at any future 
date, under any license terms, with no restrictions.  I can't predict 
the future; I don't know what I will want to do then.  Thus my interest 
is enabling the greatest flexibility in future relicensing.  At one 
extreme, I'd like the option of "closing" the source code at a future 
date, and never releasing another public update.  (Naturally anything 
openly released up to that date would remain forever available, and the 
community could maintain an open fork atop that.)  At another extreme, 
I'd like the option of "copylefting" the source code at a future date. 
Basically, I have no idea what I'll want to do, and thus it's in my 
interests to keep all doors open.


> If David's goal is to *prevent* those contributions to his work from 
> ending up in proprietary code, as a reassurance to his contributors 
> perhaps, then all he needs to do is make his license a copyleft license. 
> But if he is alright with allowing it, then the Apache license as it 
> stands would be sufficient for his needs.

I'm not sure section 5 accomplishes what I want.  To quote:

"5. Submission of Contributions.

Unless You explicitly state otherwise, any Contribution intentionally 
submitted for inclusion in the Work by You to the Licensor shall be 
under the terms and conditions of this License, without any additional 
terms or conditions. Notwithstanding the above, nothing herein shall 
supersede or modify the terms of any separate license agreement you may 
have executed with Licensor regarding such Contributions."

I think this section is clarifying that any contributor agreement or 
commercial license that you have separately executed overrides this 
license.  This is useful to clarify the relationship between this 
implicit license, and any additional explicit paperwork.

However, I don't think it says "you implicitly agree (without 
additional, explicit paperwork) that any contribution you make can be 
relicensed by the Licensor under any new terms, at any time in the 
future."  Without that, it doesn't really satisfy my needs.

Am I misreading it?

-david