[License-discuss] FAQ entry on CLAs

[Engel Nyst]

On 01/17/2015 03:00 PM, John Cowan wrote:
> 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.

I would set CAAs a bit aside for the discussion, because they're not
licenses at all. CLAs are licenses.

I agree with this remark. But doesn't it mean, in other words, that a
CLA is a *proprietary* license? It doesn't grant rights to anyone
getting the software, it excludes everyone except a named entity.


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