[Python-legal-sig] Wikipedia / CLA

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Thu, 15 Aug 2013 10:53:59 +1000
Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> 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?

The Wikimedia Foundation (with the FSF's complicity) showed how much
they respected their contributors when they switched all content from
GFDL to BY-SA without even asking them, and without them having signed
a CLA.

I don't think that's a very good example, unless you wanted to argue
that an organization doesn't need a CLA to act like a jerk.

Regards

Antoine.