Announcing OWFa and CLA 1.0

[John Cowan]

jonathon scripsit:

> >  I've never seen the point of signed CLAs.
>
> An individual, or organization find some FLOSS that almost suits
> their needs. They make some changes to it. They are willing to send
> the changes upstream, under any license upstream wants. What the
> organization, or individual does not want, is to have to keep track of
> that contribution.
>
> - From the POV of the company, the contributed code is an asset that
> has nominal value. Keeping it on the books as an asset, costs the
> company more than the code is worth. Giving the code away saves the
> company money.

In that case, the company needs to transfer the copyright, which is not
the same thing as a CLA.  A CLA gives the upstream certain rights, but
the copyright remains with the originator.

What I don't see is why an upstream license should be different from a
downstream license.

-- 
You escaped them by the will-death              John Cowan
and the Way of the Black Wheel.                 cowan at ccil.org
I could not.  --Great-Souled Sam                http://www.ccil.org/~cowan