[License-discuss] FAQ entry on CLAs

John Cowan cowan at mercury.ccil.org
Sat Jan 17 20:00:27 UTC 2015


Engel Nyst scripsit:

> There is probably no way to make a statement like this without taking a
> position, and the above does that. It's saying that "inbound agreements"
> are something else than open licenses, fulfill an unspecified need that
> open licenses don't. That open licenses are meant to be "outbound" (to
> whom?). That alone contributes to confusion about open source licensing.

While I agree with what you are saying (there is no reason why any open
source license can't be used as a contributor agreement, and some projects
actually work that way), there is a fundamental difference between the
FSF's CLA and the GPL, namely that the CLA is not a *public* license.
Open source licenses grant things to whomever has the source code;
a CLA normally grants things (anything up to full copyright ownership)
only to the party they are addressed to.

We could say that implicit requirement 0 of the OSD is that the object
of discussion is a public software license.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
You're a brave man! Go and break through the lines, and remember while
you're out there risking life and limb through shot and shell,
we'll be in here thinking what a sucker you are!    --Rufus T. Firefly



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