[Python-legal-sig] Round 2: Is CLA required to send and accept edits for Python documentation?

[Richard Fontana]

On Fri, 7 Feb 2014 19:58:39 +0300
anatoly techtonik <techtonik at gmail.com> wrote:
 
> Wikipedia is all o.k. with re-licensing under CC-BY-SA 3.0, because
> GFDL allowed that escape. The question is different. Why Wikipedia
> doesn't reqiure any CLA and all edits become CC-BY-SA, and for Python
> you are obliged to sign the CLA?

Hi,
This seems like a reasonable question to me. It is true that I
can contribute edits to Wikipedia relatively friction-free
without having to sign any legal agreement -- there is a sort of
lightweight 'by submitting this edit you are licensing it under
CC BY-SA 3.0' if I recall correctly. 

Does the PSF not have a public justification for its CLA? 

I am somewhat interested in this topic for a few reasons. In my day job
I'm a lawyer at Red Hat who advises on open source-related issues (a
Red Hat engineer pointed me to this list when it was established). Once
in a blue moon a question about the PSF CLA has come up from engineers
wishing to contribute upstream to Python. The thing that still bothers
me is the statement Jesse Noller, who I understand is on the PSF Board,
made at:
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-legal-sig/2013-May/000011.html

"Documentation is shipped with Python, it contains code examples/etc
which are relevant to the code itself and therefore larger changes
(just like code patches) require the ability for redistribution and
licensing downstream to other vendors such as ActiveState, RedHat and
others."

This itself is not a justification for a CLA, but what really bothered
me about it (as I noted at the time) was that it implied that Red Hat in
some sense needed the PSF to have a CLA for commercial reasons. This is
*completely* untrue. If Red Hat has any cognizable opinion about the
PSF CLA it is that it's a pointless annoyance. 

 - RF