Am 20.12.2007 um 23:43 schrieb Lukas Kahwe Smith:
On 20.12.2007, at 20:54, David Zülke wrote:
Am 20.12.2007 um 19:25 schrieb Lukas Kahwe Smith:
So maybe enlighten me what the purpose of the CLA is.
The purpose is that a project/company/whoever has written
confirmation that the developer who contributes something gives the
respective entity full permission and license on copyright and,
should he own any that cover the contribution, patents.
My understand is that with all contributions done under a CLA it
becomes fairly easy for all users of the code to simply point
anyone sueing to the relevant contributor. The given code can be
replaced and life goes on except for the contributor. Without a
CLA is becomes much harder for the various users to pull their
head out of things as easily, which means they will have a much
greater interest in getting the case dismissed entirely.
No, that is not correct. With and without a CLA, the contributor
who commits something on which Foo, Inc. holds a patent, is the
originator of the patent breach. A CLA does not change that, nor
protect from that. The patent holder can, with and without the CLA,
still sue both you and the project you made the contribution to.
I wonder why they need such elaborate bla bla to just say so trivial
things. The copyright part seems irrelevant given your assessment
and the patent clause seems overly complex if all they are saying
that any patents that are infringed upon by the contribution that
are owned by the contributor must be licensed royalty free for all
users of said code. The level of protection for end users seems
laughable to me, since there are still so many holes open for evil
doers aka patent trolls can exploit. So I guess CLA are only a major
annoyance and placebo.
The reason why they are so complicated is because they were written by
lawyers. If they made contracts in such a way that mere mortals
understand them, the wouldn't be able to afford fast cars and big
houses.
The copyright part is not irrelevant. It is different from country to
country. The copyright itself is transferrable in, for example, the
Netherlands and the United States, but not in Germany, Austria or
Switzerland. Most CLAs out there used by open source projects are
derived from the Apache Foundation CLA, which originates from the U.S.
And CLAs actually _do_ provide reasonable protection. The idea is that
someone cannot sneak in code he has patents on, and later ask for
royalty fees. Same goes for people who contribute in goodwill, but
once the project is popular and successful, want a slice of the pie
for themselves. Or companies that allow their devs to contribute to an
open source project, then a new manager decides that the company holds
patents on the contributions and now wants money for it. It protects
everybody, and harms nobody (unless you have something against
granting rights to the project you're contributing to).
Hope that helps understand the matter a bit better.
David
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