openstack team mailing list archive

[Ewan Mellor <Ewan.Mellor@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: openstack-bounces+ewan.mellor=citrix.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:openstack-bounces+ewan.mellor=citrix.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> On Behalf Of Mark McLoughlin
> Sent: Friday, January 06, 2012 2:45 AM
> To: Richard Fontana
> Cc: OpenStack Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Openstack] Do we really need a CLA? [was Re: Using Gerrit
> to verify the CLA]
> 
> Hi Richard,
> 
> On Thu, 2012-01-05 at 14:11 -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 04, 2012 at 09:49:29PM +0000, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> > > Hi Rick,
> > >
> > > On Tue, 2012-01-03 at 09:02 -0600, Rick Clark wrote:
> > > > Hey Mark,
> > > >
> > > > First of all, orthogonally, we are very lucky to not have
> Copyright
> > > > Assignment crushing this project.  That is what the management at
> > > > Rackspace wanted, only NASA's inability to sign such a document
> > > > prevented it.
> > >
> > > Copyright assignment would certainly be worse than an Apache-style
> CLA.
> >
> > I currently regard Apache-style CLAs are "worse" (scare quotes
> > intentional) than copyright assignment, since (1) they are
> essentially
> > equivalent to copyright assignment in the legal effect that seems
> like
> > it ought to matter to developers the most -- that is, under both
> > copyright assignment and an Apache-style CLA, the inbound party gets
> > to do whatever they want with the code contributed, yet (2) for
> > strange sociological reasons many developers tend to see copyright
> > assignment as bad but Apache CLAs as inherently benign. To put it
> more
> > simply, my concern is that Apache-style CLAs are deceptive in a way
> > that copyright assignment is not, given the well-established
> antipathy
> > to copyright assignment in open source development culture.
> >
> > For an Apache-licensed project like OpenStack this is not too
> > significant, however. Just kind of perplexing.
> 
> Ah. The Apache license is so permissive, that licensing your work under
> that license is not all that different in its effect from assigning the
> copyright to a licensee?
> 
> I hadn't thought of it that way. I guess the hangups folks have around
> copyright assignment make more sense in the context of copyleft
> licensed
> projects.

I think this is true (that this is more of an issue for copyleft projects than it is for Apache-licensed ones) but I don't think that it's fair to describe these as "strange sociological reasons" as Richard does.  These are legitimate organizational reasons.  It's much easier for me to get Citrix Legal to approve a Corporate CLA than it is for me to get them to approve ongoing, unspecified, assignment of intellectual property (particularly to assign that property to someone who might be our competitor in the future).

> > Now, I think that's perfectly fine, because that's how free
> > software/open source has always worked. Indeed it is a key part of
> why
> > it works. It would be strange if OpenStack did things any
> > differently. But if *that's* okay, why is it not okay for
> contributors
> > to OpenStack to have the same freedom to indicate their licensing in
> > of contributions in a traditional manner -- namely, by merely
> > providing notice of the license (which might as well be the Apache
> > License 2.0)?  It doesn't make sense.
> 
> I do agree, but I'm curious what you would argue makes it clear that a
> contribution is intended to be licensed under Apache License 2.0 if
> that
> contribution is merely a (significant) patch to an existing file
> containing an Apache License 2.0 header in a project containing an
> Apache License 2.0 LICENSE file.
> 
> Is simply by contributing the patch to such a project that makes the
> licensing intent sufficiently clear? Or is it simply modifying such a
> file and making the modifications publicly available?

Clause 5: "Unless You explicitly state otherwise, any Contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the Work by You to the Licensor shall be under the terms and conditions of this License"

So unless you say otherwise, any code you submit is implicitly covered by this license, and if you don't like that, then you implicitly lose the right to distribute the software under this license.

The problem with all that is "implicitly".  I'm sure all that would stand up in court (IANAL etc) but who wants to go there?  Remember SCO?  The CLAs, for me, serve mainly to make explicit things that are already in the license agreement or in existing copyright law.  That's a good thing.

Ewan.