this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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How do I make contributors to my project transfer copyright to me? (lemmy.ca)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by dullbananas@lemmy.ca to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
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Is there a pull request template that does this?

Edit: I was worried about possibly needing to change license. For now I will just use a permissive license. The situation is made seemingly complicated by the possible need to use copylefted images, combined with the possible need for using server code (which shouldn't use creative commons) in addition to the static html. I would rather deal with including parts with different licenses (probably not as complicated as I initially thought) instead of contributor license agreements.

Edit 2: Also, license enforcement is not very important for my project.

Edit 3: Now I'm using creative commons zero and making the repo comply with https://reuse.software/

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[–] hperrin@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

If you want that, you’ll get fewer contributors, but just make that explicitly clear in your pull request template.

Personally, I would never contribute to a project where the maintainer demanded I transfer copyright ownership of my contributions. I also wouldn’t use a project that did that, and would advise other people to not use that project either.

[–] SuperFola@programming.dev 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I understand the philosophy of not wanting to transfer your rights, but I don't understand what's bad about contributing to a project and having your code given to the community (as-in copyright transfer to the organisation). Would this be because the org/owner can just start selling the code or is there something that I'm missing?

[–] hperrin@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

It would mean that the owner could take that code and make it closed source. They could do literally anything they wanted with it, because they would own the copyright.