Evaluate if contributions are acceptable when the contributor signed a CLA

[philippgille]

Did you evaluate the possibility of requiring a signed CLA (Contributors License Agreement) for contributions? I think that way you could set the terms under which contributions can be made and include under which license everything falls and that you have the full rights to the contribution etc.

Many companies and foundations that maintain open source software require contributors to sign such CLAs, like the Eclipse Foundation, Canonical, Google, Microsoft and others.

I think most open source CLAs have the purpose that the maintainers can be sure that contributors grant rights to the end-user and also allow project sublicensing, but I assume that can be modified to your needs.

This might require some more research if you want to be on the safe side.

• Info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement
• Info: https://www.clahub.com/pages/why_cla
• CLA Generator: http://contributoragreements.org/agreement-chooser.html
• Service for managing CLAs for GitHub: https://www.clahub.com/
• Service for managing CLAs for GitHub: https://cla-assistant.io/

[piotrnar]

Thank you. This is a very interesting proposal and I am totally into this kind of solution.
It is just that so far I have not seen much interest in contributing into this project's source code.

I mean, people would just send minor changes, with some not very important bug fixes or fixed typos. IMHO, this just would not be worth the paper work required.

However, I would be happy to hear from people who are actually interested in joining this project, hopefully with some bigger ideas in mind. Automatic test suites, usability or performance improvements would certainly be a good areas to address.

So if anyone is interested, please just let me know.

I can also assure you that I would have no problems to make a fair share of a profit with other contributors, had the license ever been monetized. However, I hope it is understandable that at this moment I am not able to make any legal commitments concerning the details and you would just have to take my word for that.