[TYPO3-dev] Contribution to community extensions

[JoH asenau]

Am 17.08.2014 17:55, schrieb Jigal van Hemert:
> Hi,
>
> On 17-8-2014 17:45, Xavier Perseguers wrote:
>> TBH I really don't get the point of this CLA. I've the feeling that
>> without clear statements from law / advocates, "we" (not us...) invented
>> CLA and other stuff but without knowing if it is really needed in case
>> of a conflict. I may be totally wrong, this is really my personal
>> feeling but I agree that the CLA is hindering contribution, even if you
>
> CLA is currently only for Flow/Neos contributions IIRC.
>
> Furthermore, we have a licensing team and they have budget to consult
> lawyers. Seems like a good point for them to investigate and get a
> statement regarding the need of this CLA.

Since I am part of that team, maybe I can give a quick answer on that 
without having to consult a lawyer ;-)

The CLA is not needed, so you can go on without it, but it is extremely 
helpful in certain edge cases, that did not apply to the TYPO3 products 
yet, but might in the future.

A good example is the Twitter Bootstrap relicensing problem, that 
occured due to the fact that Drupal and some other Open Source projects 
are using a strict GPL v2 license, which was incompatible to the 
original Apache license of Bootstrap. While TYPO3 CMS would be allowed 
to implement Bootstrap, since we are using GPLv2 with the addition "or 
later", for the Drupal people this would have been impossible.

Now the bootstrap team, which is significantly smaller than the group of 
Drupal contributors, had to ask each and every contributor if they agree 
to a shift of the license to MIT, which is compatible to GPL v2, just to 
make it possible for Drupal and others to use Bootstrap. If they would 
not get permission by some of them, they would have to rewrite the parts 
they contributed, which can get extremely difficult, when you really 
have to rewrite a copyrighted algorithm.

Using a signed CLA that allows any kind of sublicensing of contributed 
code avoids these problems and allows the team which is currently taking 
care of product development to take actions without having to ask for 
additional permission. So they can act as quick as possible and necessary.

This is the reason, why a signed CLA is recommended but not mandatory 
for TYPO3 CMS contributons as well.

Hope that clarified things a bit.

Cheers

Joey

-- 
Wenn man keine Ahnung hat: Einfach mal Fresse halten!
(If you have no clues: simply shut your gob sometimes!)
Dieter Nuhr, German comedian
Xing: http://contact.cybercraft.de
Twitter: http://twitter.com/bunnyfield
TYPO3 cookbook (2nd edition): http://www.typo3experts.com