Re:Open-source, not open-contribution
by dspillett on Thursday January 28, 2021 @01:01PM
(#25945920)
> Even if I have to sign over all my rights of the code
Even if people sign over the rights, there can still be admin to prove that they have those rights to sign over in the first place, or the responsibility for any fall-out if it turns out they didn't later, which some will not want to take on.
Also, some projects are personal and while the authors are perfectly happy to share they want to keep their version theirs, as in entirely created by them. People release their code open source for a variety of reasons, sometimes contributions back in that manner are not actually desired and we shouldn't take offence at that (it isn't intended to raise offence).
> ought to be made very clear in README.md or CONTRIBUTING.md or something too
This is a large part of the answer, I'd agree with you there.
The default assumption on github, and more generally, is that contributions are likely to be welcome and in fact actively desired. Politely explaining that this isn't the case in obvious places removes the confusion (and if someone hasn't read the usual places before submitting the PR that is their mistake not something to blame the project owner for). A sentence or two of text, as seen in the example that started this thread, in the README or similar documentation, should be sufficient. Perhaps also add it to the LICENSE file if you think that is more likely to be checked than someone reading the whole of the README (though if the readme is long enough for that to be a significant issue, perhaps look to streamline it and move some detail off to supplementary files).
Even if people sign over the rights, there can still be admin to prove that they have those rights to sign over in the first place, or the responsibility for any fall-out if it turns out they didn't later, which some will not want to take on.
Also, some projects are personal and while the authors are perfectly happy to share they want to keep their version theirs, as in entirely created by them. People release their code open source for a variety of reasons, sometimes contributions back in that manner are not actually desired and we shouldn't take offence at that (it isn't intended to raise offence).
> ought to be made very clear in README.md or CONTRIBUTING.md or something too
This is a large part of the answer, I'd agree with you there.
The default assumption on github, and more generally, is that contributions are likely to be welcome and in fact actively desired. Politely explaining that this isn't the case in obvious places removes the confusion (and if someone hasn't read the usual places before submitting the PR that is their mistake not something to blame the project owner for). A sentence or two of text, as seen in the example that started this thread, in the README or similar documentation, should be sufficient. Perhaps also add it to the LICENSE file if you think that is more likely to be checked than someone reading the whole of the README (though if the readme is long enough for that to be a significant issue, perhaps look to streamline it and move some detail off to supplementary files).