How do I make contributors to my project transfer copyright to me?

Is there a pull request template that does this?

Edit: I was worried about possibly needing to change license. For now I will just use a permissive license. The situation is made seemingly complicated by the possible need to use copylefted images, combined with the possible need for using server code (which shouldn’t use creative commons) in addition to the static html. I would rather deal with including parts with different licenses (probably not as complicated as I initially thought) instead of contributor license agreements.

Edit 2: Also, license enforcement is not very important for my project.

Edit 3: Now I’m using creative commons zero and making the repo comply with reuse.software

bizdelnick,

If the license you use is reallu permissive, it does not forbid the change to more restricted (copyleft). You also can use separate licences for code and resourses.

Atemu,
@Atemu@lemmy.ml avatar

I was worried about possibly needing to change license.

I’d rather ask the contributors to consent to licensing their code under the new license. You don’t need the copyright in the hand of one entity to change license, it’s enough if all copyright holders agree.

The situation is made seemingly complicated by the possible need to use copylefted images

WDYM by “images”?

As in art assets? I’m not sure those would even be infectious. I think it’s possible to even use non-free assets in a GPL’d application. It may be better to treat them as such to keep the licensing simple though.

Even then, it’s usually possible to “upgrade” permissively licensed code (such as Apache 2.0) to a copyleft license as long as the original license’s conditions are still met which usually involves denoting which parts of the code is also available under the permissive license.

hperrin, (edited )

If you want that, you’ll get fewer contributors, but just make that explicitly clear in your pull request template.

Personally, I would never contribute to a project where the maintainer demanded I transfer copyright ownership of my contributions. I also wouldn’t use a project that did that, and would advise other people to not use that project either.

SuperFola,
@SuperFola@programming.dev avatar

I understand the philosophy of not wanting to transfer your rights, but I don’t understand what’s bad about contributing to a project and having your code given to the community (as-in copyright transfer to the organisation). Would this be because the org/owner can just start selling the code or is there something that I’m missing?

hperrin,

It would mean that the owner could take that code and make it closed source. They could do literally anything they wanted with it, because they would own the copyright.

tiny,

Not saying I’m a fan but you I think you are looking for a CLA or contributor license agreement

over_clox,

Methinks somebody missed the memo what open source means.

turbowafflz,

Don’t. You’re just going to lose potential contributors and users.

mp3,
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

What is the need for this?

Octorine,

Some GPL projects do it. If you find someone infringing, it’s easier to sue them if you have one copywrite holder instead of 100.

ShustOne,

I’d really advise against forcing all code contributions to be copyrighted to you. It doesn’t send a great message to contributors. It also gets murky if any libraries are used.

skami,

I am not a lawyer this is not legal advice.

Search for copyright assignment agreements, there are a few good template documents. I’d request a signed document instead of simply stating it in the PR. In all cases I would recommend verifying the document and process by a lawyer before you start using it.

Also, I would consider not requiring copyright assignment if at all possible for the project in question.

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