6 ms·

Of course not, licenses are for granting rights to use copyrighted works, not for transfering copyright. I also don't see why open source contributors should g

by gras 9y ago

Of course not, licenses are for granting rights to use copyrighted works, not for transfering copyright. I also don't see why open source contributors should give away the copyright to their work. All it accomplishes, is that the "original author" (= the copyright holder, usually a company) can re-license the work without agreement from all contributors. It strips contributors from parts of their rights.

nerdponx 9y ago
So if I fix a piece of buggy open-source code and my patch is merged, then I "own" the bug fix and the author no longer owns that portion of the program? Is that really what you're proposing? It makes sense in the case where I contribute, say, an entire new module. Then I should have the right to do with it as I please. But there needs to be a line drawn somewhere, and I sure as hell couldn't tell you where.
- snakeanus 9y ago
  > So if I fix a piece of buggy open-source code and my patch is merged, then I "own" the bug fix and the author no longer owns that portion of the program? Yes, and it makes sense, after all you made that part of the code. The same holds true for licenses like the GPL. Remember the shitstorm about MIR and the CLA that it required? People do not want to sign their rights away and allow a company to sell away their code.
  - johnny22 9y ago
    I don't mind signing a CLA in some instances: * if the license is permissive * if the license is copyleft and the organization is a non profit. Canonical fit neither of those.
  - nine_k 9y ago
    Transferring copyright has some special consequences if a contribution is made by a company employee as a part of a job, or so I heard. This greatly limits the number of high-quality contributions.
    - fourthark 9y ago
      Very, very hard to get corporate lawyers to agree to CLAs, even at companies that encourage contributions to open source.
- maxlybbert 9y ago
  > So if I fix a piece of buggy open-source code and my patch is merged, then I "own" the bug fix and the author no longer owns that portion of the program? Is that really what you're proposing? If you fix a piece of software, why would you send the fix to the original creator? To show off? The only reason I can see is for the creator to merge your fix into the project. But it seems to me that it makes the most sense to clarify that when the creator merges the changes. I don't see why the license should include a CLA any more than it should encourage potential contributors to be nice to each other, or to look both ways before crossing the street.
  - nerdponx 9y ago
    You need a CLA precisely you need a default in the case (99.9999% of the time) when the author fails to license their own patches. Maybe this just has never been an issue before, or maybe there are already court precedents around it. But it seems beneficial for authors, maintainers, and users to reduce or eliminate ambiguity due to "un-licensed" contributions.
    - bonzini 9y ago
      GitHub terms of service for example say that there is an implicit "inbound=outbound" agreement on code that you contribute via GitHub.
    - maxlybbert 9y ago
      If somebody downloads source code for a project, fixes a bug, emails that fix to the maintainer, and then tries to sue for copyright infringement, you can be sure that the first question an attorney will ask is "why did you send the fix to the project?" It would be very hard to claim that the contributor didn't expect the project to distribute the fix. With git, the contributor has an even harder case to make. A pull request is literally a request to incorporate your contribution into the project. If the pull request doesn't include a proposed change to the license, it would be very hard to claim that the fix couldn't be distributed under the terms of the existing license. I'm not aware of any court rulings directly on the subject. The best I can think of is the Prenda Law case. They sued people for copyright infringement for downloading some porn videos. A few of the people targeted showed evidence that Prenda Law had uploaded the videos themselves, and Prenda Law immediately tried to withdraw their cases. Some of the judges were very upset about that behavior. I'm pretty confident about how a court would handle a case where somebody claimed the contents of their pull request weren't meant to be distributed. The traditional concerns have been cases where people try to contribute code that actually belongs to their employer, which remains a concern with this CLA-in-the-license approach, or projects interpreting their own licenses in obtuse ways ( https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/11/msg00138.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/11/msg00138.html ).

by gras 9y ago

nerdponx 9y ago

So if I fix a piece of buggy open-source code and my patch is merged, then I "own" the bug fix and the author no longer owns that portion of the program? Is that really what you're proposing? It makes sense in the case where I contribute, say, an entire new module. Then I should have the right to do with it as I please. But there needs to be a line drawn somewhere, and I sure as hell couldn't tell you where.

snakeanus 9y ago
> So if I fix a piece of buggy open-source code and my patch is merged, then I "own" the bug fix and the author no longer owns that portion of the program? Yes, and it makes sense, after all you made that part of the code. The same holds true for licenses like the GPL. Remember the shitstorm about MIR and the CLA that it required? People do not want to sign their rights away and allow a company to sell away their code.
- johnny22 9y ago
  I don't mind signing a CLA in some instances: * if the license is permissive * if the license is copyleft and the organization is a non profit. Canonical fit neither of those.
- nine_k 9y ago
  Transferring copyright has some special consequences if a contribution is made by a company employee as a part of a job, or so I heard. This greatly limits the number of high-quality contributions.
  - fourthark 9y ago
    Very, very hard to get corporate lawyers to agree to CLAs, even at companies that encourage contributions to open source.
maxlybbert 9y ago
> So if I fix a piece of buggy open-source code and my patch is merged, then I "own" the bug fix and the author no longer owns that portion of the program? Is that really what you're proposing? If you fix a piece of software, why would you send the fix to the original creator? To show off? The only reason I can see is for the creator to merge your fix into the project. But it seems to me that it makes the most sense to clarify that when the creator merges the changes. I don't see why the license should include a CLA any more than it should encourage potential contributors to be nice to each other, or to look both ways before crossing the street.
- nerdponx 9y ago
  You need a CLA precisely you need a default in the case (99.9999% of the time) when the author fails to license their own patches. Maybe this just has never been an issue before, or maybe there are already court precedents around it. But it seems beneficial for authors, maintainers, and users to reduce or eliminate ambiguity due to "un-licensed" contributions.
  - bonzini 9y ago
    GitHub terms of service for example say that there is an implicit "inbound=outbound" agreement on code that you contribute via GitHub.
  - maxlybbert 9y ago
    If somebody downloads source code for a project, fixes a bug, emails that fix to the maintainer, and then tries to sue for copyright infringement, you can be sure that the first question an attorney will ask is "why did you send the fix to the project?" It would be very hard to claim that the contributor didn't expect the project to distribute the fix. With git, the contributor has an even harder case to make. A pull request is literally a request to incorporate your contribution into the project. If the pull request doesn't include a proposed change to the license, it would be very hard to claim that the fix couldn't be distributed under the terms of the existing license. I'm not aware of any court rulings directly on the subject. The best I can think of is the Prenda Law case. They sued people for copyright infringement for downloading some porn videos. A few of the people targeted showed evidence that Prenda Law had uploaded the videos themselves, and Prenda Law immediately tried to withdraw their cases. Some of the judges were very upset about that behavior. I'm pretty confident about how a court would handle a case where somebody claimed the contents of their pull request weren't meant to be distributed. The traditional concerns have been cases where people try to contribute code that actually belongs to their employer, which remains a concern with this CLA-in-the-license approach, or projects interpreting their own licenses in obtuse ways ( https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/11/msg00138.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/11/msg00138.html ).