Hi all,
recently, in another open-source project where I wanted to contribute
with a new feature, I've been asked to sign a Contributor License
Agreement (CLA) that starts with this statement: "You grant Mr.
[OMITTED] the ability to use the Contributions in any way." Asking for
clarifications I've been pointed out to an e-mail thread where it was
explained that the project, which had always been under a GPL license,
had to undertake such an action in order to allow the project to be
hosted on the Apple App Store, so as to make it available on iPad
devices, but that it was the intention of Mr. [OMITTED] to keep it
open-source, free and licensed as GPL as usual. As an example, I've been
referred to the case of VLC being removed from the App Store after a
complaint of one of its prior developers, who claimed there was a
violation of the original GPL license. In a sense, the CLA in this case
was presented as a way to protect the software and its distribution from
contributors who might attempt to make something similar in the future,
limiting its availability to the worldwide community.
As I know on this list there are quite a number of Mac users and
certainly Apple lovers, I'd like to hear your opinion above the above,
and specifically:
-) has anyone ever thought of licensing issues in the case of a possible
port to an iPad, or perhaps Android ?
-) are you aware of alternative ways (other than this kind of CLAs) to
allow contributors to contribute to an open-source GPL project, and
still retaining the possibility for someone to pack it into a nice
package to be made available on some of these (Apple or Android or
whatever) stores ?
Not being an Apple user, I don't even know if you can easily distribute
an open-source application for these platforms without even having to
publish them onto a store, but you can simply set-up a free repository
that users can download new software from. At a glance, I'd be tempted
to come to the conclusion that, if making a free software available on a
specific platform needs to come to big compromises on the freedom of use
of that software, then the solution is to not make it available on that
specific platform.
Thanks very much,
Tommaso
