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If you contribute to a project under a non-copyleft license (MIT, BSD, APLv2), even without copyright assignment anyone can use your code for proprietary, close

If you contribute to a project under a non-copyleft license (MIT, BSD, APLv2), even without copyright assignment anyone can use your code for proprietary, closed-source projects without asking for permission. There's no need to relicense since the original license is permissive enough. So your argument only applies to copyleft licenses.

j1elo 5y ago
Yep, I went for a coffee and realized that. But this is a consequence of the simplistic summary, as I warned. As everything, the devil is in the details! If we look closer, I believe (not an expert, though) that without a copyright assignment your contribution would have to be kept with the same license. We'd be just getting into the fact that non-copyleft licenses typically allow to use the code for building proprietary software. But AFAIK the contributed code itself would need to be kept with the original license? (that's where my knowledge is lacking)
- richardwhiuk 5y ago
  What do you mean by "kept with the original license"?
  - Proven 5y ago
    He means you couldn't relicense under another license. I think if the copyright is yours then you could.
  - pininja 5y ago
    The proprietary+forked code would become a mix of closed and open source license, but just never get released so you’d never be able to get ahold of it.
  - jcelerier 5y ago
    If you make a MIT project "Foo", not protected by a CLA and I contribute to it, then if your company uses Foo in a proprietary product they still have to give the attribution for my code as required by the MIT license, as my code will still remain MIT even if embedded in a larger non-MIT project. OTOH if I had signed a CLA, then your company would be within its right to entirely strip any attribution to give whatever license they see fit to the code I wrote.
    - richardwhiuk 5y ago
      Yeah, they'll have to attribute the code to you - the MIT license will always apply - but they'll only need to attribute you - they can make as many modifications as they like.
- oefrha 5y ago
  The contributed code under Apache would be like any other permissively-licensed third party dependencies used in any proprietary product; you add a copyright notice and possibly link to a copy (a courtesy, not even necessary), done. There’s no devil in the details. The entire codebase can be taken proprietary right now and there’s not a thing you can do. You’re free to extend the last permissively licensed version.
samatman 5y ago
Correct, also a feature, not a bug. Some of us prefer permissive licenses, or choose between permissive and copyleft depending on the nature of the application. But here's something you can't do with my MIT licensed code: change the license to copyleft. Point being, if one is contributing to a project with a permissive license, that should imply being a-ok with it getting rolled into some binary in a form you don't have access to.
- ryukafalz 5y ago
  You can't just change the license to a copyleft license, but you can make changes to it that are licensed under a copyleft license. If your fork/derivative project gets enough attention, you've practically changed the license anyway. If one is contributing to a project with a permissive license, that should also imply being a-ok with it getting rolled into a copyleft project too.
  - samatman 5y ago
    They're welcome to try, of course. Examples of permissively licensed code being used in proprietary systems abound. Has anyone ever successfully copyleft-jacked such a project? I grant that it's possible but I'm not aware of it actually happening.
    - ryukafalz 5y ago
      LibreOffice comes to mind immediately as the most high-profile one I can think of. That aside, any permissively licensed library used in a GPL program would technically fall under this situation, as it ends up distributed under the terms of the GPL. It just so happens that usually the libraries aren't modified by the application developer, so you can typically go find the original source. If they are, those changes may be under the GPL, depending on whether the application developer kept the derivative version of the library explicitly under its original license, or licensed their changes under the application's license.

j1elo 5y ago

Yep, I went for a coffee and realized that. But this is a consequence of the simplistic summary, as I warned. As everything, the devil is in the details! If we look closer, I believe (not an expert, though) that without a copyright assignment your contribution would have to be kept with the same license. We'd be just getting into the fact that non-copyleft licenses typically allow to use the code for building proprietary software. But AFAIK the contributed code itself would need to be kept with the original license? (that's where my knowledge is lacking)

richardwhiuk 5y ago
What do you mean by "kept with the original license"?
- Proven 5y ago
  He means you couldn't relicense under another license. I think if the copyright is yours then you could.
- pininja 5y ago
  The proprietary+forked code would become a mix of closed and open source license, but just never get released so you’d never be able to get ahold of it.
- jcelerier 5y ago
  If you make a MIT project "Foo", not protected by a CLA and I contribute to it, then if your company uses Foo in a proprietary product they still have to give the attribution for my code as required by the MIT license, as my code will still remain MIT even if embedded in a larger non-MIT project. OTOH if I had signed a CLA, then your company would be within its right to entirely strip any attribution to give whatever license they see fit to the code I wrote.
  - richardwhiuk 5y ago
    Yeah, they'll have to attribute the code to you - the MIT license will always apply - but they'll only need to attribute you - they can make as many modifications as they like.
oefrha 5y ago
The contributed code under Apache would be like any other permissively-licensed third party dependencies used in any proprietary product; you add a copyright notice and possibly link to a copy (a courtesy, not even necessary), done. There’s no devil in the details. The entire codebase can be taken proprietary right now and there’s not a thing you can do. You’re free to extend the last permissively licensed version.

samatman 5y ago

Correct, also a feature, not a bug. Some of us prefer permissive licenses, or choose between permissive and copyleft depending on the nature of the application. But here's something you can't do with my MIT licensed code: change the license to copyleft. Point being, if one is contributing to a project with a permissive license, that should imply being a-ok with it getting rolled into some binary in a form you don't have access to.

ryukafalz 5y ago
You can't just change the license to a copyleft license, but you can make changes to it that are licensed under a copyleft license. If your fork/derivative project gets enough attention, you've practically changed the license anyway. If one is contributing to a project with a permissive license, that should also imply being a-ok with it getting rolled into a copyleft project too.
- samatman 5y ago
  They're welcome to try, of course. Examples of permissively licensed code being used in proprietary systems abound. Has anyone ever successfully copyleft-jacked such a project? I grant that it's possible but I'm not aware of it actually happening.
  - ryukafalz 5y ago
    LibreOffice comes to mind immediately as the most high-profile one I can think of. That aside, any permissively licensed library used in a GPL program would technically fall under this situation, as it ends up distributed under the terms of the GPL. It just so happens that usually the libraries aren't modified by the application developer, so you can typically go find the original source. If they are, those changes may be under the GPL, depending on whether the application developer kept the derivative version of the library explicitly under its original license, or licensed their changes under the application's license.