[Python-legal-sig] Is CLA required to send and accept edits for Python documentation?

[Ben Finney]

Jesse Noller <jnoller at gmail.com> writes:

> On May 1, 2013, at 8:44 AM, anatoly techtonik <techtonik at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Wikipedia doesn't require to sign up a CLA to edit pages. Is CLA
> > required to send and accept edits for Python documentation? Why?
>
> We are not Wikipedia.

True, but both Wikimedia Foundation and Python Software Foundation
accept contributions from third parties, under a free-software license,
for redistribution to others. It seems a salient comparison for this
discussion.

So what is the difference that means Wikimedia Foundation do not ask for
additional agreement documents, while PSF do ask for additional
agreement documents from the contributor?

> […] larger changes (just like code patches) require the ability for
> redistribution and licensing downstream to other vendors such as
> ActiveState, RedHat and others.

The Apache License – the free-software license which the PSF ask for on
contributions to the Python code base – allows every recipient,
including the PSF, to do this already.

If that permission is already in the license on the contribution, why
does the PSF require it again in a special agreement document?

On the other hand, if the PSF requires additional powers not already
granted (to all recipients) in the license, what are those additional
powers and why does the PSF need them for a contribution?

-- 
 \      “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking |
  `\                               they don't have any.” —Alice Walker |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney