CLA is broken (was: Re: packages without internet source in fedora)

Stepan Kasal skasal at redhat.com
Mon Apr 21 14:49:36 UTC 2008


Hello,

On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 04:21:52PM -0400, Jesse Keating wrote:
> [...] (having to sign the Fedora CLA [...]

speaking about CLA (and putting aside the fact that it is
_yet_another_ document to read instead of real work), I have to
witness that I have had problems signing it.

To quote from it:

2. [...] You hereby grant [...] to recipients of software distributed by the
Project:
 (a)  a [...] copyright license to [...] prepare derivative works of,
      [...], sublicense, and distribute your Contribution and such
      derivative works;

So it seems that if I write some code and submit it to Fedora, and if
X then downloads Fedora with this code, then X has full rights to
create a derivative work and distribute it under a non-free license.

IOW, if I push something to Fedora, I'm effectively giving up my
rights to the code.  The fact that the whole project is licensed
under, say, GPL is not relevant for new contributions.

Of course, this is not a problem for a *.spec modification or tiny
*.patch files, but it is annoying that one has to remeber:
"if the patch is bigger, do not submit it to Fedora CVS."

Fortunately, I work for Red Hat, so all my code belongs to him, so I
was not forced to sign the CLA.  But it's a pity that I cannot
recommend anyone any other way to contribute to Fedora than becoming
a Red Hat employee.

And, of course, until this problem is resolved, CLA is a blocker for
any hosting which wishes to create a community outside the Fedora
world.

Stepan Kasal




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