On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 7:05 AM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> wrote:
Asking contributors to give written licenses in addition to the license implicit in the act of contribution is an act of distrust. It says something like "We worry that you might change you mind and sue, and a court might not immediately toss the suit." So it should not surprise if the occasional person reacts with overt hurt and distrust.
The other (IMO, more important) element to it is that it acts as an assertion that the developer actually *has* the rights to contribute the code they're contributing. So, rather than being worried about someone changing their mind about their contributions (although that's admittedly part of it), we're more concerned that contributors actually think about who owns the copyright on the code they're offering and make sure the appropriate permissions are in place. For example, if you look at some of the code that even Guido has submitted (e.g. pgen2), that's actually come in under Google's contributor agreement, rather than Guido's personal one. Presumably that was work he did on company time, so the copyright actually rests with Google rather than Guido. Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia