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Comment by purpleidea | Hacker News Reader

It's obvious that Golang is Google's language. The most obvious part is they require a CLA that gives them and only them special rights. It's a sham.

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I don't know of any large open source project that doesn't require a CLA. As the post suggests, perhaps one day there'll be a Golang Foundation, which would otherwise have ownership of whatever code you contribute. See that Python has a CLA that gives the PSF ownership of your code: https://www.python.org/psf/contrib/contrib-form/

Even the linux kernel has a CLA, they just call it by another name (Developer Certificate of Origin)

Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and Rust are three large open source projects that do not require a CLA. That said, I do think you're correct that these days, it's in the minority.

Node had a CLA, but it was removed in 2014. It does have a "Certificate of Origin", which you claim is the same as a CLA, but I beg to differ. The issue here is that CLAs generally require you to reassign copyright; the Certificate of Origin does not. That's the part of CLAs that the OP is taking issue with.

> Even the linux kernel has a CLA, they just call it by another name (Developer Certificate of Origin)

Who is the single beneficiary of special rights granted under the DCO? CLAs provide a single party with rights nobody else has.

There is a world of difference between a CLA that gives your code to a for profit entity and one that gives it to a foundation that (at least in theory) only cares about the health of the language/community.

Care to explain what a CLA is? Assuming a legal term...?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreemen...

Basically signing over rights of what you contribute to the company running the project.

Contributor License Agreement - basically that you agree they can use your code, modify it and distribute it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement

Thanks all. So basically you can’t build a close source app with GO?

That has nothing to do with the ability to build a closed source application. You can absolutely build one in Go.

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