<html><head></head><body><div>> The ability to license</div><blockquote type="cite"><pre>something as non-open in the future doesn't change the fact that what is
currently released is open.</pre></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Right, but it <i>does</i> 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 <i>only</i> Canonical has that right to relicense contributions.</div><div><br></div><div>> Please don't let yourself get pulled into FUD about the CLA. To date</div><blockquote type="cite"><pre>Canonical has only ever open sourced projects that had started out
closed, never the opposite.</pre></blockquote><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>On Wed, 2016-06-15 at 00:03 -0400, Michael Hall wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><pre>On 06/14/2016 11:42 PM, thgntlmnfrmtrlfmdr wrote:
<blockquote type="cite">
Hi guys, let's talk about snaps. There seems to be a problem with the
snapd contributor's license
agreement: <a href="https://assets.ubuntu.com/v1/ff2478d1-Canonical-HA-CLA-ANY-I_v1.2.pdf">https://assets.ubuntu.com/v1/ff2478d1-Canonical-HA-CLA-ANY-I_v1.2.pdf</a>
"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?
</blockquote>
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
<a href="mailto:mhall119@ubuntu.com">mhall119@ubuntu.com</a>
</pre></blockquote></body></html>