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a lot of people don't understand the reason for the CLA: it's because contributor work is under it's own copyright, per individual. This is a huge legal (burea
by novaleaf 14y ago
a lot of people don't understand the reason for the CLA:
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
disclaimer: I'm not related with jQuery, this is based on my prior knowledge of open source contribution legal issues.
- novaleaf 14y agoand, I may add, something a lot of startups should consider more significantly before "opening up" their code bases. Tracking down contributions after-the-fact just to bring your codebase into compliance is going to be almost impossible, and this may be a requirement for your prospective exit's legal team.
- jeltz 14y agoDo you have an example of where this has been a problem? Most open source projects lack a CLA and do not have problems with bureaucracy. For example the PostgreSQL and Linux projects lack any CLA and have never had any problems with this as far as I know. Lacking a CLA means one less hurdle for new developers. The advantage of a CLA is that you can change license, but if you are MIT licensed you can already change to almost any license without requiring any approval from the community. CLA:s only make sense for very strict licenses.