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Sure, but also the “collective ownership” of the Linux kernel is the reason it can never leave GPLv2 for GPLv3. If companies like Red Hat start finding fun loop

Sure, but also the “collective ownership” of the Linux kernel is the reason it can never leave GPLv2 for GPLv3. If companies like Red Hat start finding fun loopholes in GPLv2, Linux will be powerless to seal them up.

scj 3y ago
IANAL... A CLA should specify that the copyright assigned will always be under a license approved by the FSF and OSI. The "and" is important, as it's probably possible for one of those organizations to go off the rails, but not both.
- lesserknowndan 3y ago
  If the contribution is into an open source project on, e.g. github, the contribution is already covered by an open source license the contributor is aware of. If the copyright owner takes it private, they cannot revoke the existing GPL license on the existing code base - only changes from that point forward. At that point, the contributor could take the existing codebase and fork it to keep it open source. Of course, they can only do that under the existing license so they have no power to change the license themselves. What CLAs do allow (that IMHO is beneficial) is the copyright owner developing other licensing options for specific customers. This can provide a better income source than just “support” for a project.
mindslight 3y ago
Redhat hasn't found a bona fide loophole in the GPL. Rather they're trying to create a drag that will cause market inefficiency to accrue to them. It can only work as long as their changes stay relatively minor. The more valuable those changes are, the more incentive there is for people to break their agreement and widely publish the GPL code, perhaps even anonymously so that Redhat can't actually discontinue their access. Sveasoft tried the same thing with WRT54G firmware back in the day, and failed so hard that apparently nobody really remembers.
- jacooper 3y ago
  Its not a loop hole, the GPL only ever required you to give the source to users, it never required the source to be public.
  - mindslight 3y ago
    Sure, but the terms of the GPL imply other not-explicitly-specified results due to straightforward emergent behavior. Like the terms themselves don't prohibit (and even encourage) charging for GPL software, but in the presence of FSF's Freedom #2 (redistribution), the price ends up tied to the work of distribution rather than the utility of the software. That overall resulting state of affairs is what people are taking for granted and reacting against possibly changing.
olliej 3y ago
Linus has explicitly stated he doesn't like GPLv3, and neither do many others - corporate and otherwise - so all a copyright assignment would do is potentially remove their rights to use code they wrote. Either by making it GPL3 and have them lose access to it in their use case, have the code made proprietary so they can't use it at all, or switch to another license entirely (BSD, MIT, or public domain which are all "worse" than GPL per the GPL3 folk). I don't understand people who would assign copyright for OSS code they wrote to someone else, because that's just a giant F U to the entire concept, and has literally no up side for anyone other than the new owner.

scj 3y ago

IANAL... A CLA should specify that the copyright assigned will always be under a license approved by the FSF and OSI. The "and" is important, as it's probably possible for one of those organizations to go off the rails, but not both.

lesserknowndan 3y ago
If the contribution is into an open source project on, e.g. github, the contribution is already covered by an open source license the contributor is aware of. If the copyright owner takes it private, they cannot revoke the existing GPL license on the existing code base - only changes from that point forward. At that point, the contributor could take the existing codebase and fork it to keep it open source. Of course, they can only do that under the existing license so they have no power to change the license themselves. What CLAs do allow (that IMHO is beneficial) is the copyright owner developing other licensing options for specific customers. This can provide a better income source than just “support” for a project.

mindslight 3y ago

Redhat hasn't found a bona fide loophole in the GPL. Rather they're trying to create a drag that will cause market inefficiency to accrue to them. It can only work as long as their changes stay relatively minor. The more valuable those changes are, the more incentive there is for people to break their agreement and widely publish the GPL code, perhaps even anonymously so that Redhat can't actually discontinue their access. Sveasoft tried the same thing with WRT54G firmware back in the day, and failed so hard that apparently nobody really remembers.

jacooper 3y ago
Its not a loop hole, the GPL only ever required you to give the source to users, it never required the source to be public.
- mindslight 3y ago
  Sure, but the terms of the GPL imply other not-explicitly-specified results due to straightforward emergent behavior. Like the terms themselves don't prohibit (and even encourage) charging for GPL software, but in the presence of FSF's Freedom #2 (redistribution), the price ends up tied to the work of distribution rather than the utility of the software. That overall resulting state of affairs is what people are taking for granted and reacting against possibly changing.

olliej 3y ago

Linus has explicitly stated he doesn't like GPLv3, and neither do many others - corporate and otherwise - so all a copyright assignment would do is potentially remove their rights to use code they wrote. Either by making it GPL3 and have them lose access to it in their use case, have the code made proprietary so they can't use it at all, or switch to another license entirely (BSD, MIT, or public domain which are all "worse" than GPL per the GPL3 folk). I don't understand people who would assign copyright for OSS code they wrote to someone else, because that's just a giant F U to the entire concept, and has literally no up side for anyone other than the new owner.