[License-discuss] FAQ entry on CLAs

[Allison Randal]

On 01/17/2015 10:21 AM, Engel Nyst wrote:
> 
> Reviewing doesn't seem to have anything to do with it indeed, but other
> than that I'm not sure I understand the difference you feel important
> here. An open source license is "inbound" or "outbound" depending only
> on the position /of the speaker/. There is no absolute direction, it's
> relative to the speaker.
> 
> Am I looking at some code I wrote, or am I looking at code someone else
> wrote. Why is that relevant?
> 
> 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.
> 
> One cannot say that open licenses are meant to be "outbound" without
> implying that when you receive them (so inbound from your perspective)
> you may need something else. It's synonym with: they weren't meant to be
> "received", they were only meant to be "sent" (?). They, well, might
> also work when you're at the "receiving" end, but weren't written for it.
> 
>> It also doesn't review the use of open source licenses as
>> inbound=outbound.
> 
> I honestly don't see how OSI can do otherwise than make a clear
> statement that the OSD guarantees all rights one needs to *receive* to
> be able to further copy, distribute, modify, include or make derivative
> works of, under the conditions of the respective open source license.
> 
> Endorsing the distinction between inbound and outbound as if it was
> objectively meaningful, and placing open licenses on the outbound side
> is, in the best case, like saying: "OSI reviews licenses to guarantee
> developers that they give the necessary rights to anyone, but it doesn't
> review if, as far as the license is concerned, you receive these
> rights". That doesn't make any sense to me.

The distinction I'm making is between the act of contributing and the
act of receiving. OSI's criteria for open source licenses doesn't
include any review of whether the license used inbound would be
respectful of developers' rights and desires for the use of their code,
encourage healthy collaboration in the community of developers, allow
for ongoing maintenance of an established codebase by an ever-changing
group of developers, empower groups who want to do active GPL
enforcement, etc, etc. There are an array of attributes of healthy open
source projects related to intellectual property that the Open Source
Definition just doesn't cover. It focuses on protecting the rights of
users (recipients of the code).

A single legal document is perfectly adequate to cover both contribution
and receiving, and I expect any license OSI has approved would be fine
used inbound=outbound. But when OSI approves a license it is only making
a statement that the license meets the outbound criteria of the OSD.

Allison