Not sure if i like that changeâŚ
It seems that i need to talk to a lawyer before making any PR⌠
Yeah I have the same concerns, thats quickly a very demotivating aspect.
Not only that⌠it also forces me to loose my anonymity that iâve been proud to keep in the internet world, which i like to keep separated from my real life.
I really donât like that.
Yeah true, and I also dislike that in a formular where Iâm asking for a possible first patch to be accepted the upfront direct question if I want to transfer the copyrights. Yeah I know there stood âat your discretionâ. Still itsâŚlets say strange.
Didnât the BF already have a real name policy during the Phabricator era?
In addition, last I checked you need to put in an email address to even register on Gitea like any other place on the web, is there some âformalâ convention they expect in the address then here?
The thread as it stands now appears to be them being fine with dialing it back to just your name and email (which as I mentioned is widespread already even in the Blender scene).
No.
And you donât need a real ID to have an email either. You can have your own email provider also, with no problem at all⌠all you need is to register the domain name, and a good internet provider (with fixed IP).
The article that was linked in the feedback discussion is pretty good and provides a good perspective on why one would or wouldnât want a CLA. Iâd also trust the fact that a big corporation like Red Hat has done their homework in analyzing legally whether or not theyâd need a CLA. If theyâve decided not to enforce it in their opensource projects, their reasoning has a certain weight.
The red tape issue rings quite true to me. I feel that many non-corporate contributors could be turned off by having to provide their identity online/sign an agreement in order to start contributing to Blender.
The intention behind the CLA itself is benign, inasmuch as it allows one to choose whether or not the copyright should be assigned to the BF (some other opensource projects, in the past, did the very controversial move of requiring one to give up their copyright). Itâs just the real name requirement for contributors that is a philosophical pity. For a project that prides itself with being opensource, like Blender, philosophy should be important too.
(disclaimer: not a developer nor a lawyer)
I wonder if is proactive or reactive, as it was with âno other software screenshotâ rule.
There are companies that would be happy to spend yearly Blenders fund to burden BF in legal battle.
I wonder the same too.
I also wonder: to sign that CLA, you are not required to provide any ID, but just to state your full name.
At that point, someone in bad faith who wanted to contribute stolen code to Blender could easily go around this.
Contributing to Blender currently already requires one to submit their code under a GPL/GPL-compliant license. Youâre already violating the law if you re-license someone elseâs code without their authorization. Moreover, you are the copyright holder of the piece of code you contribute. So, what is the difference?
(I think this reasoning is also what brought Fedora to avoid a CLA and go for their FPCA, which is fundamentally a license that by default just make you state that the code youâre contributing will be licensed under a Fedora-allowed license).
But again, not a lawyer, I guess their legals had a reason to come up with this.
It is reasonable to think the BF is now big enough that bad actors might begin to attempt to ensnare them on legal matters (ie. the bigger the potential target the more visible they get). I know people might say they want to keep their online life separate from their real one, but Blender is now pretty far from being a passion project with a ragtag team and there is now a lot of money powering it.
As a result, I do not know if such a request is realistic anymore the same way you would not put on a different face for volunteering at a large non-profit organization, and to do such a thing is really just deception to begin with that could lead to trouble (when others discover that your online self was only a facade and an exercise in hypocrisy).
In short, we either deal with the growing pains or a chunk of the community can embark on a Blender fork that is all FOSS passion and no corporate sponsorship of any kind.
Thatâs already too much!!
There are people that have a contract where all code done while the contract lives, belongs to a certaint entity.
Contributions for FOSS should not require any authenticity of the author⌠just that they work and make the software better.
and of course: that they stand by the GPL license
As long as Blender remains free, I couldnât care less. If you think Blenderâs development is too slow right now, wait until someone forks it. Iâm so tired of all the drama. Just stick to reporting the news and keep the hot takes in a separate thread where I can ignore them
Isnât that exactly the kind of case which needs to be avoided. If a programmer isnât allowed to produce code for Blender (and anyone else except for a certain entity), they shouldnât submit code within that time frame.
If the company with that stupid clause finds out, they might threaten the Blender Foundation with legal actions, unless they remove the code. Both scenarios are rather unpleasant.
I am not aware of too many long lasting, decently sized open source projects, where some form of signing or authentication is not required.
I was surprised in the past when I submitted a pull request to a project, that the first reply was automated and told me to sign a form where I had to confirm that I am legally allowed to contribute and all that stuff.
I understand your point of view. However, this is a user forum. There are always topics that are not clear to certain users. Maybe they donât have the context about what happend or whatever. Having some discussions here is necessary in my opinion. There is no need to agree with all the development decisions that are being made.
Though, I am not a fan of the drama either that is unnecessarily started way too frequently in my view. For the current topic, it is more understandable to me that with some others.
Itâs not a drama⌠The CLA decision itâs just an unecessary inconvinience.
And as @DeepBlender says, this is a forum. Not a newspaper. We are suppose to discuss all things related to Blender, as long we keep a civilized tone and stand.
Legaly, that needs to be the case. Thought the anonimity* could allow the participation of some developers in the Blender project, without any nasty consequence.
* anonimity here is just a disconnection to a real identity⌠it doesnât mean that the PRs shouldnât be attributed to a certain persona
That makes no sense. BF doesnât have anything to do with this. If a person with such a contract contributes to some external project, the blame will fall to the person alone.
Also, BF doesnât own Blender⌠Since the beginning of its GPL licence, Blender turned into a snowball, and all BF can do is to steer it left or right.
IIRC, one just needed to confirm that the code would be under GPL (or Apache) license. I was never asked for my identity, except my BlenderID one.
Intentionally allowing this would be stupid, as it might have really bad consequences for the project.
In my view, there are good reasons to allow anonymous contributions. One of them is that not everyone wants to operate in public. However, as soon as a reason is playing and bending the legality, it is not a good reason anymore.
Any contribution which might be legally problematic in some way has to be rejected.
Blender remains free precisely because such discussions take place (itâs âfree as in free beerâ because its âfree as in freedomâ).
On top of that as far as open source projects go, Blender is probably the one that attracts the most users that are not particularly tech savvy, it might be a lot of users first exposure to open source. Even more reason for these kind of stances to be discussed and made clear.
That being said, I think alltough not very well phrased, @Double_G âs point is that this discussion is not strictly related to developer meeting notes, itâs more of an announcement from the BF. @moderators, maybe it merits itâs own thread ?
Agreed, and moved to this separate thread.
Although blunt, it was actually a carefully phrased stance that I stand by. You did read my intention clearly, though. That thread was not the place to discuss the merits of the announcement. That belongs in a separate thread (this one)