[License-discuss] Contributor Clauses in Licenses

[McCoy Smith]

I'm not seeing why there is a difference between a document that says 
"here are the conditions upon which any contributions to the software 
are accepted" and a document that says "here are the conditions upon 
which the software is licensed, and here are also the conditions upon 
which any contributions to the software are accepted."

If you're concern is manifestation of assent, the act of submitting a 
contribution and requesting it be accepted would be the manifestation.

On 12/8/2025 4:06 PM, Josh Berkus wrote:
> On 12/8/25 3:43 PM, Pamela Chestek wrote:
>> As to Josh's comment "No text contained within the license can 
>> enforce that my PR is under that license," I disagree. When I created 
>> my contribution I necessarily accepted the terms of the outbound 
>> license, or at least I am hard-pressed to think of a way that someone 
>> made a contribution that matters but would not have taken an action 
>> that requires acceptance of the license.
>
> I can think of lots of ways to make a meaningful contribution without 
> having either run or redistributed the software:
>
> - Someone contributing grammar corrections to the docs or website 
> without using the software
>
> - Someone offering to naturalize the documentation based on a 
> translation framework, which also doesn't require using the software
>
> - Someone building a code contribution based on a differently licensed 
> version of the same software (if, for example, it's available under a 
> proprietary license as well)
>
> - Someone submitting 3rd-party dependency version updates without 
> running the software (like, for example, DependaBot does, and humans 
> do this as well).
>
> - A graphics designer submitting a change to graphics or UI design 
> created entirely with design programs.
>
> I'm sure there's other situations I haven't thought of.  Are most 
> contributions based on the contributor having first downloaded and run 
> the software under the license?  Sure.  But definitely not all of them.
>