[License-discuss] Contributor Clauses in Licenses

[David Woolley]

On 08/12/2025 21:32, Josh Berkus wrote:
> 1. Unless enforced by some other mechanism (CLA, repository TOS, etc.), 
> it is not automatically true that contributions are under the license in 
> the first place;

CLAs aren't licences to the contributor, but rather a licence from the 
contributor to the initial developer, often allowing the initial 
developer to use the contributions outside of open source licensing.  As 
such I don't see how they can be used to constrain someone creating 
modifications to the code.

> 
> 2. A license cannot reasonably contain the full multiple-page-long set 
> of the various things that a contributor should comply with, leaving us 
> with a very arbitrary selection.

I would say any attempt to limit forks to particular standards would 
take the code out of open source, so any text included would be 
informative, not permissive, so should not be in the formal part of any 
open source licence.