Educational Content

[fabian]

the reasons why DCOs were not chosen were already given above by Thomas.. it also doesn't prevent projects being stuck on a license they no longer want to have, because contributors from 10 years ago cannot agree to such a change, because they are no longer available/reachable for one reason or another. the only other way to avoid this issue is to not allow external contributions.

you always have the freedom to fork if at some hypothetical point in the future Proxmox the company makes a choice you don't like. and you are free to not contribute if you don't like our choice of CLA terms, just like you are free to not contribute to permissively-licensed projects if you dislike those licenses. nobody forces you to do anything.

 

[esi_y]

the reasons why DCOs were not chosen were already given above by Thomas.

That's fine, but the license is not equivalent, also some would consider it higher barrier to entry.

it also doesn't prevent projects being stuck on a license they no longer want to have

So this was my point, I think it's also reasonable to be willing to provide only contribution for free if they are guaranteed to stay the said license.

you always have the freedom to fork if at some hypothetical point in the future Proxmox the company makes a choice you don't like

Yes but I do not want to contribute to something that some commercial entity will then build their solution on, proprietary. Just an example. I think it's a reasonable stance.

and you are free to not contribute if you don't like our choice of CLA terms

Proxmox could also state that you have the choice to relicense to other free license, not any license.

just like you are free to not contribute to permissively-licensed projects if you dislike those licenses.

That's correct, but Proxmox is virtue signalling with AGPL, not a permissive license.

nobody forces you to do anything.

So those were my answers I was after. Thanks.

 

[esi_y]

One last thing ...

contributors from 10 years ago cannot agree to such a change, because they are no longer available/reachable for one reason or another

Licenses do NOT have to be perpetual either.

Finally, I will just cross-link it to my original thread:
https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/contributor-license-agreement-agpl.153198/

I do not say you are going to re-license, but my whole point here was, that you may.

Proxmox is a commercial entity, so (with regards to the OP of this thread): people should consider working for free wisely.