snapd contribution license

[thgntlmnfrmtrlfmdr]

> The ability to license
> something as non-open in the future doesn't change the fact that what
> is
> currently released is open.
Right, but it does make it not copyleft. So is that really what it's
doing or am I reading it wrong? Not that permissive is bad, I just want
to know. Because it seems like they are making everyone's contributions
essentially permissive open source. So if you wanted to contribute
copyleft code to snapd, you couldn't. Also, I still don't know if only 
Canonical has that right to relicense contributions.
> Please don't let yourself get pulled into FUD about the CLA. To date
> Canonical has only ever open sourced projects that had started out
> closed, never the opposite.
I understand that and personally I have a good opinion of Canonical. I
just don't see why they would want to license things this way if they
truly only had good intentions. It honestly seems like they just copy-
pasted a "template" of a license and didn't notice what they accidently
put in. The thing is I don't see why Canonical would need or want the
right to relicense things as proprietary.
On Wed, 2016-06-15 at 00:03 -0400, Michael Hall wrote:
> On 06/14/2016 11:42 PM, thgntlmnfrmtrlfmdr wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Hi guys, let's talk about snaps. There seems to be a problem with the
> > snapd contributor's license
> > agreement: https://assets.ubuntu.com/v1/ff2478d1-Canonical-HA-CLA-ANY-I_v1.2.pdf
> > 
> > 
> > "2.3 Outbound License
> > Based on the grant of rights in Sections 2.1 and 2.2, if We
> > include Your Contribution in a Material, We may license the
> > Contribution under any license, including copyleft,
> > permissive, commercial, or _*proprietar*y_ licenses. As a
> > condition on the exercise of this right, We agree to also
> > license the Contribution under the terms of the license or
> > licenses which We are using for the Material on the
> > Submission Date."
> > 
> > As you can see, it seems to allow Canonical to relicense any
> > contribution to snapd under a closed source license. In other words, it
> > doesn't seem to be copyleft at all, since Canonical can take it out of
> > the open source ecosystem at any time apparently.
> > 
> > As far as I can tell, the license isn't permissive either, since only
> > Canonical can relicense stuff. Thus is appears to be a nonfree license.
> > 
> > Am I reading this wrong? What is going on here?
> > 
> > 
> > 

> 
> 
> That is not a correct reading of the CLA. The ability to license
> something as non-open in the future doesn't change the fact that what is
> currently released is open. Technically if somebody is the sole
> copyright holder on a project they always have this ability, even if
> they released it under the GPL without a CLA. The open licenses in
> almost all cases are perpetual, which means you can't revoke the open
> license on existing code, only change it for future code. Nor are CLAs
> something uncommon for open source projects, the FSF uses them,
> OpenStack uses them, and many many more.
> 
> Please don't let yourself get pulled into FUD about the CLA. To date
> Canonical has only ever open sourced projects that had started out
> closed, never the opposite.
> 
> Michael Hall
> 
mhall119 at ubuntu.com
> 
> 
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/attachments/20160615/5980230e/attachment.html>