I'd really advise against forcing all code contributions to be copyrighted to you. It doesn't send a great message to contributors. It also gets murky if any libraries are used.
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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Methinks somebody missed the memo what open source means.
Copyright and license agreements are not at all the same thing. And just because something is "open source" doesn't mean that it is free of copyright.
Did you even read the title of the post? OP wants to force contributors to transfer copyright to OP.
I don't care how you wanna twist the thoughts between open source vs copyright, ain't nobody got any business trying to force contributors out of a copyright license.
I don't think you've properly thought through the consequences of not considering IP rights for projects with a significant number of contributors. There are absolutely situations in which having a single IP holder is advantageous to having multiple IP holders. Large open source projects might find governance hard when they're hamstrung by getting consensus from hundreds or thousands of contributors.
And yes, I did read the title and the post. I understood it.
Don't. You're just going to lose potential contributors and users.
What is the need for this?
Some GPL projects do it. If you find someone infringing, it's easier to sue them if you have one copywrite holder instead of 100.
Generally the only groups I would maybe sign such a CLA in regard to the GPL is: the FSF and the Linux Foundation. Anybody else (especially individuals I don't know) I wouldn't sign any CLA unless my contribution is like a 1 off, trivial patch.
Not saying I'm a fan but you I think you are looking for a CLA or contributor license agreement
This is the correct answer.
I'm sure there is a way to make signing the CLA part of the pull request process on Github. I've been asked to do it. Not sure how Github works nowadays, maybe it was part of Github or an external bot.
And I don't agree with the other people here. I think having complete copyright makes some things easier. And if you do an open project, maintain it for years, do 99% of the work... You're allowed being paid with the contributions.
Mind there are other licenses than just the GPL. You could just pick a MIT license / Apache / BSD instead and maybe you don't need the contributors to sign over their copyright anymore, because these licenses cover pretty much everything and transfer it to everyone, including you.
If you want that, you’ll get fewer contributors, but just make that explicitly clear in your pull request template.
Personally, I would never contribute to a project where the maintainer demanded I transfer copyright ownership of my contributions. I also wouldn’t use a project that did that, and would advise other people to not use that project either.
I understand the philosophy of not wanting to transfer your rights, but I don't understand what's bad about contributing to a project and having your code given to the community (as-in copyright transfer to the organisation). Would this be because the org/owner can just start selling the code or is there something that I'm missing?
It would mean that the owner could take that code and make it closed source. They could do literally anything they wanted with it, because they would own the copyright.
They can't make it closed source retroactively (well, technically you can design a license like that but that's a different discussion and the most widely used open source licenses aren't made like that). They can relicense at some point going forward, but all the code up to that point would still be available under the old license and contributors could fork and continue without batting an eye.
It depends on what license the project is using. Some licenses are very permissive, meaning there's lots of ways they can be abused. For example with MIT/BSD licenses there's no provision to share the code with the final product so they could drag their feet releasing parts of the code or hide them altogether. They could also resort to tivoization, NDAs, commercial plugins and all kinds of shenanigans.
Look for example to the Plex and Emby projects which were originally open and went commercial later. The way they did it is why there's a lot of bad blood in the community to this day.
I've also personally been involved with other projects where someone tried to take them commercial in a less than graceful way, shall we say. It's never pretty.
If the license you use is reallu permissive, it does not forbid the change to more restricted (copyleft). You also can use separate licences for code and resourses.
I am not a lawyer this is not legal advice.
Search for copyright assignment agreements, there are a few good template documents. I’d request a signed document instead of simply stating it in the PR. In all cases I would recommend verifying the document and process by a lawyer before you start using it.
Also, I would consider not requiring copyright assignment if at all possible for the project in question.
I was worried about possibly needing to change license.
I'd rather ask the contributors to consent to licensing their code under the new license. You don't need the copyright in the hand of one entity to change license, it's enough if all copyright holders agree.
The situation is made seemingly complicated by the possible need to use copylefted images
WDYM by "images"?
As in art assets? I'm not sure those would even be infectious. I think it's possible to even use non-free assets in a GPL'd application. It may be better to treat them as such to keep the licensing simple though.
Even then, it's usually possible to "upgrade" permissively licensed code (such as Apache 2.0) to a copyleft license as long as the original license's conditions are still met which usually involves denoting which parts of the code is also available under the permissive license.