OSI-approved license that assigns contributor copyright to me

[Mitchell Baker]

>
> 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
>
>
David

Your goal sounds a lot like what was tried in the Netscape Public 
License.  That license allowed Netscape to relicense code under 
different terms, but didn't allow anyone else to.  That license was 
identified as "not open source."  Netscape actually had two special 
rights in the NPL, the other allowed Netscape to include NPL code in 
proprietary products without complying with the NPL.  (Intent was to 
deal with existing products and contractual agreements.)  One or the 
other or both of these was not open source.  So I'm not sure what you 
want to do will be either. 

mitchell