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A comment on The Exclusive License to Make Money from the Community Contributions.

Re:The Exclusive License to Make Money from the Community Co... by zvr on Thursday December 23, 2021 @08:14AM (#29661509)
The blog post is misinformed; I have never seen a CLA granting an "exclusive" license.

Of course it's true that CLAs are not symmetrical and when you sign one, you usually give more than you gain. That's why lots of projects do not use them and are perfectly happy with a signed DCO (Developer Certificate of Origin) https://developercertificate.org/

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Re:The Exclusive License to Make Money from the Community Co... by pingsl on Thursday December 23, 2021 @08:40AM (#29661685)
The exvlusive is not enforced by the terms in the CLA. It comes from the fact that contributors only sign up the CLA with the company when making contributions to the company's OSS projects, that company thus claim they have the "exclusion".
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Re:The Exclusive License to Make Money from the Community Co... by zvr on Thursday December 23, 2021 @04:06PM (#29666473)
They sign a CLA that explicitly says

> 2. [...] You hereby grant to [...] a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license [...]

and

> Except for the license granted herein to [...], You reserve all right, title, and interest in and to Your Contributions.

I am amazed that their S-1 includes language such as the one shown in the article.

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Re:The Exclusive License to Make Money from the Community Co... by blendergeek on Thursday December 23, 2021 @10:17AM (#29662593)
> The blog post is misinformed; I have never seen a CLA granting an "exclusive" license.

Given that the blog post is commenting on verbiage in an official SEC filing, I will give it a pass. However, this companies lawyers are seriously misinformed (unless they are using a noncommercial license).

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