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In order to open a PR to a repository, you need to push the commit somewhere, usually your own fork. And since that fork already contains the same LICENSE as th

by diggan 2y ago

In order to open a PR to a repository, you need to push the commit somewhere, usually your own fork. And since that fork already contains the same LICENSE as the upstream project (your project), the author of the PR has essentially already licensed the code under the same LICENSE you use. So I'd get rid of the bot asking people to confirm the change is copyright-free (since it's already implicitly copyright-free, they've pushed it to GitHub already), and merge the PRs without making contributors jump through additional hoops. But it seems like when corps like Microsoft et al does open source, they like to sprinkle in a bit of bureaucracy to the process for the sake of bureaucracy, should hardly come as a surprise to anyone.

veggieroll 2y ago
The problem is that licensing under the same terms is not enough for most corporate open source stewards. They want copyright assignment, meaning you give them all of your rights.
- diggan 2y ago
  My understanding is that if that was the bot would be asking for, they'd ask for a CLA/DCO or similar, which doesn't seem to be what it currently asks for > The contribution bot asks for confirmation the code change is copyright-free, but the contributor doesn’t respond. Maybe the author is summarizing though and the bot asks the author to confirm it's copyright free and also to sign the CLA/DCO. If so, unlikely their corporate overlord would be OK with them just merging the PR without explicitly signed CLA/DCO.
  - veggieroll 2y ago
    Absolutely. In this case, CLA isn't an issue. But I bring it up, because it seems to me that this article is a consequence of the prevalence of CLA's in projects advised by professional legal advice. This issue of "how can we ensure this code is under copyright terms XYZ" seems to have been popularly solved by CLA's. And thus a pall has been cast over the traditional open source dynamic, where there'd normally be no question that a fork with a license in the repo is obviously licensed under the same terms. I've heard this on legal podcasts as well. Where lawyers spend like 30+ minutes talking about whether a license in the project root counts. To the traditional free software / open source movement, this seems really silly, because that's how software projects worked for almost the entire existence of free software / open source software until the last 5-ish years.

by diggan 2y ago

veggieroll 2y ago

The problem is that licensing under the same terms is not enough for most corporate open source stewards. They want copyright assignment, meaning you give them all of your rights.

diggan 2y ago
My understanding is that if that was the bot would be asking for, they'd ask for a CLA/DCO or similar, which doesn't seem to be what it currently asks for > The contribution bot asks for confirmation the code change is copyright-free, but the contributor doesn’t respond. Maybe the author is summarizing though and the bot asks the author to confirm it's copyright free and also to sign the CLA/DCO. If so, unlikely their corporate overlord would be OK with them just merging the PR without explicitly signed CLA/DCO.
- veggieroll 2y ago
  Absolutely. In this case, CLA isn't an issue. But I bring it up, because it seems to me that this article is a consequence of the prevalence of CLA's in projects advised by professional legal advice. This issue of "how can we ensure this code is under copyright terms XYZ" seems to have been popularly solved by CLA's. And thus a pall has been cast over the traditional open source dynamic, where there'd normally be no question that a fork with a license in the repo is obviously licensed under the same terms. I've heard this on legal podcasts as well. Where lawyers spend like 30+ minutes talking about whether a license in the project root counts. To the traditional free software / open source movement, this seems really silly, because that's how software projects worked for almost the entire existence of free software / open source software until the last 5-ish years.