FSFE Newsletter - February 2014

[Florian Weimer]

* Johannes Zarl:

> Let me make my thoughts more explicit (keeping the Qt example from my mail 
> from Friday):
>
> Person A wants to contribute to the Qt project, and signs the CLA
> that allows Digia to have a dual-licensing with both GPL and their
> proprietary license.  Therefore the CLA makes it possible to
> distribute the code under non-free licenses. Therefore person A can
> not value software freedom.

Or the person is not aware what the CLA implies, or disagrees about
the impact of those implications.

This is a complicated topic.  I don't understand why the FSFE is
against CLAs, considering that it granted permissions to use FLA code
in proprietary programs (see the previous discussion about the
agreement with Bacula Systems—the published agreement is not even
restricted to Bacula code).