[License-discuss] Contributor Clauses in Licenses

[Josh Berkus]

On 12/8/25 2:12 PM, McCoy Smith wrote:
> If the contribution is not a derivative, they're merely articulating the 
> conditions under which a contribution would be accepted by the project 
> maintainers, *not* a condition on how the non-derivative work can 
> otherwise be used. Again, I don't see how that is an issue.

It doesn't violate the OSD, no.  But it also has zero effect.  It's a no-op.

Say I submit a 3-line PR to the included documentation for an OSS 
project.  No text contained within the license can enforce that my PR is 
under that license.  That has to be enforced elsewhere -- in which case, 
why put it in the license at all?

 > One could solve this problem by simply saying license in=license out but
 > you don't need a separate clause in a license to do that.

Yes.  This exactly.

-- 
Josh Berkus