I’d generally avoid CLAs when possible. They’re a pain for contributors, and it’s not clear that most projects actually need them.

I agree that they're a pain, but I strongly disagree with avoiding them if you expect your project to have >10 contributors and exist for >10 years. >10y or >10 contributors, and eventually you will *have* to change some aspect of it. It is *so much better* to have a CLA then.

The LLVM relicensing comes to mind. That’s still ongoing and is tricky. Some think that’s a positive thing. Biggest one for me would be changes in laws / application of laws. You can’t plan for those, and contributors literally die eventually so you’d need to replace their work

How does that actually matter with sufficiently permissive licensing? The LLVM relicensing stuff does not look like anything normal ppl should see as desirable, and if it had been impossible the corporate overlords wouldn't have been able to waste folks' time on it...

What does the UIUC license actually promise, though? And which parts are enforceable, and are most companies OK with? I’m not a fan of relicensing, but for LLVM I think it’s the right move.

I have a stronger interest in forcing companies to be okay with the licenses real FOSS actually uses than in spending unpaid labor on making these companies' lawyers happy.

Is UIUC real FOSS?

It's an obscure license, but I didn't mean to claim some *licenses* are "real FOSS". Rather the software is. LLVM is real FOSS regardless of the specific permissive license. Nobody will ever be sued over silly differences in wording of the same permissiveness.

It's absurd that the same companies whose lawyers insist there's some threat from not strongarming volunteers to use of their preferred FOSS licenses flaunt their non-compliance with GDPR that has actual penalties.

The things you’re alluding to are completely different parts of the company, which are effectively separated from one another. 🤷‍♂️

My point is just that the legal theory that any of this matters seems completely disingenuous.

Maybe if it came from the same person, or from close colleagues… but here they’re sufficiently far as to be quite different people. Most big companies aren’t an all-agreeing hive-mind.

Do they have separate in-house legal departments for different things like this, vs one for the company with different specializations within it?

I have seen both patterns in working on the LLVM relicensing. TBH, I was amazed at how strongly companies & lawyers felt about it. I'm not arguing they're *right* (I certainly don't know). But despite how painful the LLVM process is, it seems more hopeful than the alternative.

My favorite was a mixture of in-house and outside lawyers, with different outside lawfirms hired by different business units fairly far removed from the in-house legal team. =[[[[[[

I can see why some lawyers like the ASL. It has that shrink wrap term stating patches on mailing lists are automatically licensed under the same terms, plus it has patent grants. But I think ambiguity is protective. In ASL, does each contributor warrant against patent liability?