In the US, you automatically have copyright over code you create yourself (assuming there's 'authorship' to make it something deserving of copyright). Sending s

In the US, you automatically have copyright over code you create yourself (assuming there's 'authorship' to make it something deserving of copyright). Sending someone a PR doesn't mean you lose your copyright. You end up in a murky area where the norms of OSS are that your contribution is now part of the package, but they don't have clear ownership over the copyright of all the code in the repo. This is exactly why most big companies require new contributors to sign a copyright assignment before any of their PRs can be merged. Gray areas don't work when lots of money is at stake.