No More CLA For GCC
The Free Software Foundation has long been one of those outfits that has refused to accept (significant) source contributions without the author signing a “Contributor Licence Agreement”. It’s not enough to release the code under the same licence as the project, you must also hand over the entire copyright to them. This is supposedly because they have received legal advice that it makes it easier to defend against copyright infringements if they own all the code. Quite a few other projects don’t agree <https://lwn.net/Articles/592503/>. For example, the Linux kernel project does not demand CLAs, only a “Certificate of Origin” (affirming that you have the right to contribute the code). And now the GNU Compiler Collection is joining them. <https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/02/gcc_fsf_code_copyright/>
The Free Software Foundation has long been one of those outfits that has refused to accept (significant) source contributions without the author signing a “Contributor Licence Agreement”. It’s not enough to release the code under the same licence as the project, you must also hand over the entire copyright to them.
This is supposedly because they have received legal advice that it makes it easier to defend against copyright infringements if they own all the code.
Quite a few other projects don’t agree <https://lwn.net/Articles/592503/>. For example, the Linux kernel project does not demand CLAs, only a “Certificate of Origin” (affirming that you have the right to contribute the code). And now the GNU Compiler Collection is joining them.
<https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/02/gcc_fsf_code_copyright/>
Having a CLA makes it easier for an entity to provide commercial licenses of its code base, no dispensation of revenue necessary (and figuring out the percentages for all the contributors)... But it sure hinders contributions! Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
On Thu, 3 Jun 2021 14:23:39 +1200, Peter Reutemann wrote:
Having a CLA makes it easier for an entity to provide commercial licenses of its code base, no dispensation of revenue necessary (and figuring out the percentages for all the contributors)... But it sure hinders contributions!
With the FSF at least you were pretty sure that would not happen. But yes, certain proprietary companies are quite fond of them.
participants (2)
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro -
Peter Reutemann