On 01/17/2015 03:00 PM, John Cowan wrote: > Engel Nyst scripsit: > >> There is probably no way to make a statement like this without >> taking a position, and the above does that. It's saying that >> "inbound agreements" are something else than open licenses, >> fulfill an unspecified need that open licenses don't. That open >> licenses are meant to be "outbound" (to whom?). That alone >> contributes to confusion about open source licensing. > > While I agree with what you are saying (there is no reason why any > open source license can't be used as a contributor agreement, and > some projects actually work that way), there is a fundamental > difference between the FSF's CLA and the GPL, namely that the CLA is > not a *public* license. Open source licenses grant things to > whomever has the source code; a CLA normally grants things (anything > up to full copyright ownership) only to the party they are addressed > to. > > We could say that implicit requirement 0 of the OSD is that the > object of discussion is a public software license.
I would set CAAs a bit aside for the discussion, because they're not licenses at all. CLAs are licenses. I agree with this remark. But doesn't it mean, in other words, that a CLA is a *proprietary* license? It doesn't grant rights to anyone getting the software, it excludes everyone except a named entity. -- ~ "We like to think of our forums as a Free-Speech Zone. And freedom works best at the point of a bayonet." (Amazon, Inc.) _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
