Comment by withinrafael
4 days ago
The CLA does not change the copyright owner of the contributed content (https://zed.dev/cla), so I'm confused by the project's comments on copyright reassignment.
4 days ago
The CLA does not change the copyright owner of the contributed content (https://zed.dev/cla), so I'm confused by the project's comments on copyright reassignment.
Maybe not technically correct but it's still the gist of this line, no?
> Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to Company, and to recipients of software distributed by Company related hereto, a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute, Your Contributions and such derivative works (the “Contributor License Grant”).
They are allowed to use your contribution in a derivative work under another license and/or sublicense your contribution.
It's technically not copyright reassignment though.
Yes, you grant the entity you've submitted a contribution to, to use (not own) your contribution in whatever it ends up in. That was the whole point of the developer's contribution right?
The CLA has you granting them a non-open-source license. It permits them to change the Zed license to a proprietary one while still incorporating your contributions. It doesn't assign copyright ownership, but your retaining the ability to release your contribution under a different license later has little practical value.
2 replies →
I'm concerned about relicensing. See HashiCorp.
It may not technically reassign copyright, but it grants them permission to do whatever they want with your contributions, which seems pretty equivalent in terms of outcome.
Yes, you grant the entity you've submitted a contribution to, to use (not own) your contribution in whatever it ends up in. That was the whole point of the developer's contribution right?
Without CLA, they can’t sell, for example, the code under different license, or be an exception themselves for the current GPL license requirements. But yeah, there might be some confusion with terms.
Relevant part:
> 2. Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to Company, and to recipients of software distributed by Company related hereto, a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute, Your Contributions and such derivative works (the “Contributor License Grant”). Further, to the extent that You participate in any livestream or other collaborative feedback generating session offered by Company, you hereby consent to use of any content shared by you in connection therewith in accordance with the foregoing Contributor License Grant.