Contributor license agreements

[bdube]

Upstream project had a contributor license agreement for contributors to sign and keep on file with the project.

How do we want to handle this?

I am not a lawyer. If we were starting from scratch, I think it would be our choice. Starting from a project that had license agreements, well I don't know.

[horaceyoung]

I'm not an expert in licenses. The CLA used by metabolist is used in addition to GPL to grant metabolist and its users the necessary rights to use and distribute the contributions. It seems to be covered by this section of GPL as well:

Each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free patent license under the contributor's essential patent claims, to make, use, sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of its contributor version.

Anyways we always have the option to require a CLA or simply disregard it.

[bdube]

That section of the GPL about patents is very similar to the section about copyright in The Apache Software Foundation's Individual Contributor License Agreement. The license text is in the agreement itself, and another page has some general information about their agreements.

Patents are also a risk but I think it's copyright that is the issue for us.

Why does the FSF require that contributors to FSF-copyrighted programs assign copyright to the FSF? If I hold copyright on a GPLed program, should I do this, too? If so, how? The answer to this FAQ might apply to us, in a different way. There, the FSF is discussing the need to enforce and defend its copyright. Here, we would need to enforce our compliance with Apple's terms. I don't know if we can do that without having each contributor choose one of the options mentioned by the FSF--assign copyright to the project; disclaim all rights; public domain.

Metatext's contribution page indicates that Metabolist must be the sole copyright holder in order to comply with Apple's requirements. My reading of Section 3.2 of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement lands at the same conclusion.

Without a contributor agreement, each contributor retains the copyright to their contributed works. This is where I think paragraph (d) of Section 3.2 comes into play.

[...], Your Covered Products [...] do not and will not violate, misappropriate, or infringe any Apple or third-party copyrights, trademarks, rights of privacy and publicity, trade secrets, patents, or other proprietary or legal rights [...]

Apple is first party, the legal entity publishing the app is second party, contributors with their own copyrights are third party. Can we hold up our end of the agreement?

[bdube]

I forgot about current state, too. Right now, my understanding is that Metabolist holds the copyright to everything up to the point where we forked off.

[VyrCossont]

I think the problem is that the GPLv3 is designed to be incompatible with the App Store, and distributing it to the App Store means that it has to be dual-licensed: GPLv3 and "Metabolist can do whatever they want as the copyright holder". I'm fine with dual-licensing my own contributions; we may well need to get Metabolist's permission to use theirs and those assigned to them.

[bdube]

The Nextcloud iOS client mentions in the README that they use GPLv3 with Apple App Store exception.

With their combination of license and exception, they don't require a CLA to contribute and the copyright belongs to all contributors.

[VyrCossont]

That'd work. Didn't know that was a thing before now.