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What it means from a legal standpoint is that Apple is bound by the same terms as everybody else. The way it works is this: Apple is making Swift available to
by carussell 11y ago
What it means from a legal standpoint is that Apple is bound by the same terms as everybody else.
The way it works is this: Apple is making Swift available to you (and others) under Apache 2.0. You send in some changes, which you make available to Apple (and others) under Apache 2.0. Everyone is on equal footing, and Apple can't relicense it to someone else on terms of their choosing that involve, for example, neutering the patent grant's self-destruct clause.
This was the default way that open source worked for years, before people started cargo-culting the (totally unnecessary) CLA process into their projects.
What it means from a practical standpoint, though, is that the project is easier to contribute to, what with the impedance imposed by a CLA process being, you know, non-existent.
- darkarmani 11y agoThat ridiculous: "started cargo-culting the(totally unnecessary) CLA process" It's so they can re-license in the future. There are some projects with so many authors that it is impossible to re-license because you need sign-off by every single person, even if it makes sense to re-license.
- stormbrew 11y agoFrom a contributer's point of view, the inability to re-license practically is often a feature, not a bug. CLAs make the worst case scenario touted by GPL advocates about non-GPL licenses practical: They can profit directly and exclusively from your work without your direct consent.
- richardfontana 11y agoAlso the ability to relicense an Apache License 2.0 work is relatively unimportant (compared to, say, the ability to relicense something under a more restrictive license like the GPL).
- carussell 11y agoI know CLAs let corps relicense. In fact, you'll find that I explicitly mentioned relicensing in the sentence immediately preceding that one... Can you explain what's ridiculous about the part of my comment that you quoted?
- DasIch 11y agoThat's a feature. What is the point of contributing to a project, if someone else can effectively destroy all your work at their discretion?