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Ask HN: CLA/DCO contribution as an employee?
I have a general question regarding contributing modifications to open source projects. Both CLA and DCO require me to acknowledge that I am allowed to contribute.
The question is, as an individual that works in a big monolith company with a contract that states that I am not allowed to work otherwise without permission.
Should I be asking my employer on each patch if it's OK ? When should I be going for a CCLA instead of CLA ? Is there any clear cut case where I dont have to ask for permission ?
Is there a distinction between cases such as working on contributing after work hours on non work related projects, working after hours on projects that are related to my day job (but that I didn't do this specific work in work hours) ?
If you work in a big company, are there company-wide stipulations regarding contributing to open source projects ?
- danieltillett 9y agoYou need to speak to a lawyer as the law varies depending on where you live.
- trw10011 9y agoso every hackernews user has talked to a lawyer before submitting a PR on github ?
- danieltillett 9y agoYou are asking a legal question where the answer depends on where you live and also what contracts you have signed. Nobody (not even a lawyer) could answer your question based on the information you have provided. In practice unless what you contributed has any serious value (unlikely) then nobody will care. There is a 99.9% chance that nothing will happen if you just go ahead and submit a PR without worrying about the legailities [0]. 0. This is not legal advice and I am not a lawyer.
- trw10011 9y agoI found a major bug in a big project (which is a big edge case, but still if it happens...). So one could assume it has serious value to some people. Sad that there is no discussion here, since I assume that my position is that of lots of people here, so I guess everyone is buring their head in the sand (if this was a non-issue than projects wouldnt ask for CLA/DCO).