tbm's blog

FOSSBazaar is no longer being updated. The information on this site is preserved for your convenience but may be out of date. Please visit Linux Foundation's Open Compliance Program for current information and activities.

Open Source Contributor Agreements: Purpose and Scope

tbm's picture

Contributor Agreements, also known as Contributor License Agreements (CLA), are increasingly being adopted by open source projects. This article explains the purpose of these Contributor Agreements.

When a contribution is made to an open source project, there is an implicit assumption (and sometimes explicit consent) that the contribution (code, translation, artwork, etc) may be incorporated into the project and distributed under the license the project is using. However, many conditions of the contribution are not explicitly called out. The purpose of Contributor Agreements is to make the terms under which contributions are made explicit, thereby protecting the project, the users of the software and often also the contributors.

Resources for Open Source Compliance

tbm's picture

Open source is everywhere today and there is growing awareness that companies have to meet certain obligations when distributing open source software. Here are some useful resources to learn more about open source compliance.

Open source compliance: know your obligations

tbm's picture

One key element of open source compliance is to know your obligations. There is a lot of confusion about what open source means exactly and some people believe that open source means you can do whatever you want. While open source grants users many freedoms, open source code comes under specific license terms which often include obligations that have to be followed by companies distributing open source software.

Because of recent lawsuits by the Software Freedom Law Center on behalf of the busybox project and the activities of the GPL-Violations project, awareness is growing that copyleft licenses such as the GPL come with obligations. For example, the GPL requires source code to be offered to those who receive binaries. The AGPL goes a step further and additionally requires that the source code be made available to users who interact with the software over the network.

Governance session at Open World Forum

tbm's picture

FOSSBazaar, with the help of the QualiPSo project, have organized a governance session at Open World Forum in Paris. We'll have a whole day to talk about governance issues. The morning session is dedicated to the adoption of open source whereas the focus of the afternoon session is on compliance. The program is available now. I hope to see many of you in Paris!

CFP: Best Practices in Open Source Governance at Open World Forum

tbm's picture

We're going to have a governance session at Open World Forum in Paris again this year. The aim of this session is to exchange and discuss best practices of the governance of open source, i.e. to discuss how organizations can manage their use of open source. This session will bring together experts and decision makers to discuss the state of the art of open source governance, analyze challenges that organizations face with the governance of open source and to identify ways for improving governance processes.

We're currently looking for proposals for this event. Please see the Open World Forum wiki for more information on submitting a proposal. The deadline is Thursday, April 15.