osCommerce and the CLA
To follow-up to my previous posting about osCommerce and the BSD Licence I will now try and answer some of the misconceptions around the new CLA (Contributor License Agreement) which was added as part of the osCommerce 3.x release. I will also aim to make this into an official FAQ document when time allows.
The reason we have decided to include the need to sign a CLA before contributions can be accepted into the osCommerce core is to ensure that the entire community can understand the terms under which the code has been contributed to the project. Signing the CLA does not change your rights to use your own Contributions for any other purpose and only applies to contributions which you want to be considered for inclusion into the "Core" framework. The CLA does not apply to community addons which are available from the addons site.
The CLA is here to protect the rights of the community to ensure that any code which is included as part of the core framework is removed from licensing and patent restrictions.
Q. Do I need to agree to the CLA to create community addons for osCommerce 3.x?
A. No. Only contributions which you would like to be considered for the "core" framework require the CLA to be agreed to.
Q. If my contribution is accepted in the "core" framework for osCommerce 3.x what does that mean?
A. By agreeing to the CLA you are providing osCommerce a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicenseable, transferable license.
Q. What does this license allow?
A. You agree to let osCommerce use, copy, prepare derivative works of, distribute and publicly perform and display on any licensing terms your contribution to the "core" framework, including without limitation be distributed under open source licenses such the the GNU General Public License / BSD License and also be included in binary only / commercial projects.
Q. Can I still use any contribution I make to the osCommerce "core" framework for other projects?
A. Yes. Agreeing to the CLA and allowing your code to be considered for inclusion into the "core" framework in no way affects your rights to use your code in any way you like.
In summary, the CLA is there to help make clear that any contributions included into the "core" framework are without restriction and that anyone contributing code has the right to do so, free of any restriction such as intellectual property or patent and that they have the legal right to agree to the terms of the CLA.
I am sure that we can encourage developers to contribute to the framework and by doing so, they can help us make it as stable and as flexible as possible. Now is the time for community to embrace open source and get involved.
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April 7th, 2011 - 11:21
I understand the CLA now with the FAQ. That is good.
But so now I am going to ask what is the benefit for a contributor to sign it then? We are all independent – whatever – people, adding contributions for various reasons one of which I would guess is to promote our names or businesses (human nature).
GPL ensures source code inclusion with a release, which means the exposure of the author’s name via the copyright in the source files. What the BSD is offering if someone encodes the source? I don’t want my name excluded from a possible distribution and I don’t know others who would think otherwise in the open source community.
Now I don’t know what are the steps to sign the CLA when you try to post code. Is it an optional step that pops up when you try to submit code or a separate page altogether? Because in the former case I would think it’s a trick.
And since this post is about contributing code in general, may I ask to change the configuration of the IPB forum so attachments in public forum posts are accessible even when not logged in? Because right now it shows:
[#10171] You do not have permission to view this attachment.
Few years ago I posted code as an attachment for the alpha3 and then realized I couldn’t access the code if I wasn’t logged in. If I knew it in advance I wouldn’t included the code there. Attachments are uploaded on the server so there are no external links that can be manipulated like with other things eg: external avatars.
April 7th, 2011 - 12:41
The benefit is that you can help make osCommerce better by offering bug fixes and code improvements to the very heart of osCommerce.
There is a massive core framework which needs to be built, maintained, supported and fixed, I would certainly hope that people in the community would want to help do that.
We want to encourage participation from the community so that rapid progress can be made in making osCommerce the best and most flexible framework it can be, I would certainly hope there are people out there willing to do more than just complain about lack of progress and actually get involved.
We are now making this possible and at the same time ensuring that the licensing of osCommerce core is a transparent as possible.
The CLA is a one-off form on the countdown site that you authenticate with using your forum credentials and then include your github username, then you go to github, fork the project and make your contribution, we can then easily merge that back into the core codebase.
Again, Github makes the whole development platform transparent and removes the need for us to manage patches etc which gives us more time to actually code.