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If you contribute code to a project under Apache 2.0 terms, or a CLA without any copyright assignment, how can a company license it "exclusively ... under their

If you contribute code to a project under Apache 2.0 terms, or a CLA without any copyright assignment, how can a company license it "exclusively ... under their proprietary license"? You mentioned subjecting an entire project that uses Elastic proprietary code to their proprietary license. Are you confusing source-available terms for copyleft terms? The licensing situation for Elastic work is far less nebulous than for much other open source, both legally, and in public notices. See: https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/blob/master/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/blob/master/LICENSE... Way easier to look at than the nightmare that is 100-character SPDX license expressions for distribution packages.

bad_user 8y ago
> If you contribute code to a project under Apache 2.0 terms Apache 2.0 is applied per source file, not per the whole project. This is unlike copyleft licenses like the GPL, which have a demand for the whole project to be licensed under GPL-compatible terms. In other words, for a repository that mixes Apache 2.0 with proprietary code, your contribution isn't necessarily licensed under Apache 2.0, unless you're explicit about it (e.g. the source file has the license header). That said, even if the license if liberal (like Apache 2.0 is), that doesn't mean anybody can change it without your approval. This is a common misconception with liberal licenses. Just because the license is very permissive, that doesn't mean you can copy / paste that code and re-license it in any way you want, without explicit permission from the author. So you're correct in that regard.
- kemitchell 8y ago
  Apache 2 can be applied to whole projects. It doesn’t say anything to the contrary. That’s very common in language communities with strong packaging norms, like npm and Ruby.

bad_user 8y ago

> If you contribute code to a project under Apache 2.0 terms Apache 2.0 is applied per source file, not per the whole project. This is unlike copyleft licenses like the GPL, which have a demand for the whole project to be licensed under GPL-compatible terms. In other words, for a repository that mixes Apache 2.0 with proprietary code, your contribution isn't necessarily licensed under Apache 2.0, unless you're explicit about it (e.g. the source file has the license header). That said, even if the license if liberal (like Apache 2.0 is), that doesn't mean anybody can change it without your approval. This is a common misconception with liberal licenses. Just because the license is very permissive, that doesn't mean you can copy / paste that code and re-license it in any way you want, without explicit permission from the author. So you're correct in that regard.

kemitchell 8y ago
Apache 2 can be applied to whole projects. It doesn’t say anything to the contrary. That’s very common in language communities with strong packaging norms, like npm and Ruby.