CLA: silver bullet to reduce the compliance risk of open source community?

Whether the contribution of the contributor is permanent and irrevocable

Whether the contributor has authorized the patent at the same time of copyright authorization

If the contributor infringes the copyright of a third party , As the distributor of the project , Whether they can reduce and transfer their own legal responsibilities and risks

For other contents, please refer to the table above

For organizations ： Although most of the contributions have License（ The header comment of the file ）, But most License Not clear Indicates that the license is permanent ,CLA Added the permanent nature of the authorization , And irrevocability . clear The licensing of patents can prevent the organization from falling into patent infringement cases , Original statements help organizations in the event of copyright infringement against third parties , Transfer responsibilities and reduce risks . meanwhile , signed CLA It can also leave the contact information of all contributors , In some cases, it is easier to reach all contributors . These are good for the organization .

For contributors ： clear Whether you have transferred the copyright or just authorized it , Define the scope of contribution Authorization （ Such as ： Can't be used for illegal purposes ）, meanwhile Make it clear again Contributors don't need to support what they contribute , Assumed liabilities （ Although this part of the content will generally be used by most License contain ）.

Yes License Clear definition and further clarification of vague and controversial contents in .

Copyright transfer rules ： Generally speaking, contributions to open source projects, large or small , Will make the contributor one of the copyright owners of the project . But the side effect is the surge in the number of copyright owners of a project , In practice, this will give in addition to copyright licensing （License Main content ） Other copyright activities （ Such as copyright protection , Copyright transfer, etc ） Bring great difficulties . You can make A few Rules for the transfer of contributed copyright to major copyright owners ,CLA Is the best place to place the rule .

License Change rules ： Traditionally ,License Changes need to be agreed by all copyright owners , This is often very difficult in the practice of open source projects , Can be in CLA add License Change the relevant rules , Exceed 80% Of “ Key contributors ” agree! , And define mainstream contributors to solve this problem .

License Rights protection rules ： face License Compliance infringement , A set of rights protection rules can be defined in advance , Ensure that the whole rights protection behavior conforms to the common interests and project values of the main copyright owners of the project . Just like not long ago Patrick McHardy event in ,McHardy And Netfilter In the settlement agreement reached ： requirement Anything to do with Netfilter The decision of relevant version rights protection activities should be based on the majority vote of the core team members . If such content appears in advance CLA Inside , You can avoid the whole controversy , Reduce the adverse effects of the event .