[TYPO3-dev] Contribution to community extensions

[Philipp Gampe]

Hi Xavier,

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
> ease the agreement workflow, this will still hinder potential
> contributors from quickly providing some fix, just because they wanted
> to gently fix something and don't want to bother with signing papers
> (even electronically), agree to complex terms, ... for fixing a typo
> somewhere.
> 
> Thankfully CMS Core did not introduce this, that's a chance!

The point is, that you must not merge code without knowing the copyright 
associate to it. From a legal point of view, all code belongs to the author 
and unless he gives you an explicit permission (CLA), you must not use this 
code.
This is pretty much (although the systems are quite different) in both US 
and continental copy-right law. There is no fair-use coming into play here 
either.

Even a patch attached to the bugtracker cannot be merged unless the author 
explicitly allowed it.
I would say (but a legal advisory might counsel different) that patches 
submitted to gerrit can reasonable be assumed to have the permission, 
however this is not true if the author did this in his worktime or with 
company knowledge without the company giving permission.

The only reason, there are not many legal cases because if this is, that 
neither the open source projects, nor the developers have lots of money.

Best regards
-- 
Philipp Gampe – PGP-Key 0AD96065 – TYPO3 UG Bonn/Köln
Documentation – Active contributor TYPO3 CMS
TYPO3 .... inspiring people to share!