This is why you should never sign a CLA; it allows later relicensing of your work to nonfree licenses.
Linux doesn’t have a CLA, and it’s the most popular operating system in the world.
Linux doesn’t have a CLA, and it’s the most popular operating system in the world.
If you believe in software freedoms, then there will never be any reason to need to relicense, nor would you want to.
Free software is an ideology, like human rights. You can’t use it only sometimes and be said to support it.
The Tivo-ization process of the 90s shows that while this might be frequently true, it isn’t without exception. From a practical standpoint, continuing to provide for user freedom would have been best accomplished (personal opinion) if many projects had been able to move to a more AGPL style license.
> For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.
My amateur understanding is that the major kernel copyright holders are essentially comfortable with Tivoization and aren't looking to rock the boat with a lawsuit.
What if there was an extreme license that simply said you have to share it upon request from anyone, even private versions? Ignoring whether that's annoying or whether it's enforceable, would that be non-free?
I've seen an argument that the particular way the AGPL is worded makes it non-free, which seems pretty plausible, but I don't think that's an argument against "a more AGPL style license".
When you publish an open-source project, people are going to assume you want your project to be open source. This often provides an enormous boost to the project, as people are way more willing to contribute to a collaborative community project than just donating time to some for-profit company.
I am totally fine with companies making proprietary for-profit software, but don't leech off the open-source community by pretending to be something you are not. I am at a point where I assume any company-backed project with a CLA is going to do a bait-and-switch as soon as that becomes the more profitable option. Remember kids: corporations are not your friend.
The linked article is precisely a counter example to this point!
Are you claiming the MPL is not a free software license?
Ironically, despite all the (unequivocally 100% wrong) yammering about this topic on places like this forum, many of the bigger "evil" companies like Meta and Google don't require transfer of copyright to contribute to their FOSS projects, while places like the FSF do require it so they can relicense under potential future FSF licenses e.g. a practically stronger version of the GPL 3's "or later versions" clause. And there are even more agreements like the FSFe's FSA that can stipulate exactly a fixed set of licenses that might be used in the future, as a sort of middleground.
Placing your contribution in the public domain is highly unlikely to be possible as your contribution is in fact a derivative work.
Patches are obviously a derivative work. No one spontaneously describes deleting several lines of code & then replacing it with other lines of code.