On 15/02/14 18:06, Florian Weimer wrote: > * Johannes Zarl: > >> Let me make my thoughts more explicit (keeping the Qt example from my mail >> from Friday): >> >> Person A wants to contribute to the Qt project, and signs the CLA >> that allows Digia to have a dual-licensing with both GPL and their >> proprietary license. Therefore the CLA makes it possible to >> distribute the code under non-free licenses. Therefore person A can >> not value software freedom. > > Or the person is not aware what the CLA implies, or disagrees about > the impact of those implications. > > This is a complicated topic. I don't understand why the FSFE is > against CLAs, considering that it granted permissions to use FLA code > in proprietary programs (see the previous discussion about the > agreement with Bacula Systems—the published agreement is not even > restricted to Bacula code).
The worst CLAs are basically like employment agreements - but without a salary There is a big difference between assigning copyright (or giving an unlimited license to sub-license) to a company and giving those rights to a democratically managed non-profit organisation like FSF(E). There are always going to be a subset of developers who will never sign a CLA to a third-party corporation. As a consequence, those projects with corporate CLAs are always going to be at a disadvantage. _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list [email protected] https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
