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

[seth vidal]

On Mon, 2008-04-21 at 16:49 +0200, Stepan Kasal wrote:
> 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.

Stephen,
 I'm fairly confident that you're absolutely incorrect about what the
CLA entails. However, rather than add one more non-lawyer-opinion into
the mix I've asked if we can get a comment from legal about this.

thanks,
-sv