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Winamp is going open source, and it feels like the early 2000s again
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this post was submitted on 19 May 2024
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Even CLA + GPL/MIT would suffice
I disagree.
CLA gives them total ownership of the code (all contributors are surrendering their copyright), and allows them to change license at any point in time, including making it closed source.
If you're contributing code to a project with CLA you're not contributing to Open Source, you're working for a company for free.
A CLA is okay if and only if the copyright is being assigned to the Free Software Foundation or a similarly reputable nonprofit.
Yes, thanks for pointing it out. As long as it is some organization that can't be bought it should be fine. I didn't included that because it makes my response more confusing.
Essentially CLA gives the entire copyright to specific entity and that entity in case of FSF it likely could use it for fighting violations, while some startup likely intends to change license when their product gets more popular to cash out on it (for example what Hashicorp did recently before selling to IBM)
A CLA in itself is not necessarily bad, but it depends greatly of what the license is and what it says about future intentions.
There had been many instances of copyright folders using the CLA as a means to go proprietary so the community is understandably wary about it today.
If the current license is permanent and non-revokable like one of the well-known ones (GPL or MIT to name the most) then even if they change it later the code up to that point would remain under that license and can be forked freely.
The issue in that case is not losing the code, it's that the copyright holder has a long term plan where they benefit from community help for a while then take the product close source to monetize it, which is regarded as a dick move.
IMO there are benefits to any project that uses a FOSS license even if temporarily if you can fork it afterwards. And let's not forget that you can also fork it during.
AFAIK that's already the deal. So the proposal is a improvement of the deal. Also don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
This is not "perfect is enemy of good" it would be if I was arguing about MIT vs GPL etc.
By signing CLA you're surrendering copyright to the company and this allows them do do whatever they wish with your contribution, including switching back to closed source.
Hashicorp was able to change license of their products exactly thanks to CLA.