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> They require CLA, so that they can put the code under MIT. It's legal silliness, but how is it at all bad? Why would a CLA help with that? Since all existing

by jeltz 14y ago

> They require CLA, so that they can put the code under MIT. It's legal silliness, but how is it at all bad? Why would a CLA help with that? Since all existing code is already licensed under MIT, and for future code they can just refuse to merge anything not under MIT. The only use a CLA has is if anyone thought the MIT restrictions were too harsh, but I cannot see when that would be the case. You can do almost anything with MIT licensed code.

novaleaf 14y ago
it's because contributor work is under it's own copyright, per individual. This is a huge legal (bureaucratic) issue and thus the CLA is meant to normalize all contributions to fall under the MIT. also I know this is getting into inflammable territory but the GPL (v3 especially) is a very big turn off to adoption for a lot of for-profit companies due to worries that if they use the GPL code, their product and all derivative works are "tainted" (need to provide 'free' source access) Thus I can see the removal of GPL as being a clarifying factor, as lots of companies dual license GPL and a proprietary license, which may lead to misunderstanding in this case.
- jeltz 14y ago
  I have no problem at all with the dropping of GPL. Dropping GPL may stop any worries that jQuery at some point in the future will drop MIT in favor of GPL (though they still could do that since MIT is GPL compatible). The license itself is what normalizes the copyrights, so a CLA is just additional bureaucracy. The contributors to jQuery have already all agreed to contribute their code under MIT, so why would they need to do it again?
dmethvin 14y ago
The CLA formalizes that you intended to contribute the work and that any other people with an interest in it (your employer for example) is okay with it. Here's a worst-case scenario: Imagine that some employee of a company writes some nifty code and submits a pull request to jQuery. We land that code and six months later the company finds out. They're shocked, shocked that the employee wrote that code on company time and just gave it to us, especially because it was based on one of their super-secret header files and patented algorithms. They insist that we remove it immediately and remove that version from all CDNs. So we do. And everyone using that code has a broken site. Now of course, that could still happen with a CLA in place, but only if the contributor lies or there is a misunderstanding between employer and employee. We're not seeking ironclad protection here, only reasonable due diligence.

by jeltz 14y ago

novaleaf 14y ago

it's because contributor work is under it's own copyright, per individual. This is a huge legal (bureaucratic) issue and thus the CLA is meant to normalize all contributions to fall under the MIT. also I know this is getting into inflammable territory but the GPL (v3 especially) is a very big turn off to adoption for a lot of for-profit companies due to worries that if they use the GPL code, their product and all derivative works are "tainted" (need to provide 'free' source access) Thus I can see the removal of GPL as being a clarifying factor, as lots of companies dual license GPL and a proprietary license, which may lead to misunderstanding in this case.

jeltz 14y ago
I have no problem at all with the dropping of GPL. Dropping GPL may stop any worries that jQuery at some point in the future will drop MIT in favor of GPL (though they still could do that since MIT is GPL compatible). The license itself is what normalizes the copyrights, so a CLA is just additional bureaucracy. The contributors to jQuery have already all agreed to contribute their code under MIT, so why would they need to do it again?

dmethvin 14y ago

The CLA formalizes that you intended to contribute the work and that any other people with an interest in it (your employer for example) is okay with it. Here's a worst-case scenario: Imagine that some employee of a company writes some nifty code and submits a pull request to jQuery. We land that code and six months later the company finds out. They're shocked, shocked that the employee wrote that code on company time and just gave it to us, especially because it was based on one of their super-secret header files and patented algorithms. They insist that we remove it immediately and remove that version from all CDNs. So we do. And everyone using that code has a broken site. Now of course, that could still happen with a CLA in place, but only if the contributor lies or there is a misunderstanding between employer and employee. We're not seeking ironclad protection here, only reasonable due diligence.