The developers of the GNU C Library (glibc) have changed the rules for accepting modifications and transferring copyright, eliminating the mandatory transfer of property rights to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the code. Similar to the changes previously made in the GCC project, signing the CLA agreement with the FSF in Glibc has been shifted to an optional operation conducted at the developer's discretion. The rule changes allowing the acceptance of patches without the transfer of rights to the FSF will take effect on August 2 and will affect all development branches of Glibc, except for the code that is used in conjunction with other GNU projects through Gnulib.
In addition to transferring property rights to the FSF, developers are provided with the opportunity to confirm their right to transfer code to the Glibc project using the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) mechanism. According to the DCO, authorship tracking is accomplished by attaching a line "Signed-off-by: developer's name and email" to each change. By adding this signature to the patch, the developer confirms their authorship over the transferred code and agrees to its distribution as part of the project or as part of the code under a free license. Unlike the actions of the GCC project, the decision in Glibc was not imposed from above by the governing council but was made after preliminary discussions with all community representatives.
The cancellation of the mandatory signing of the agreement with the FSF significantly simplifies the onboarding of new participants into the development and makes the project independent of trends within the FSF. While individual participants signing the CLA agreement only led to wasting time on unnecessary formalities, for corporations and employees of large companies, transferring rights to the FSF was fraught with many legal complications and approvals that did not always end successfully.
The refusal of centralized management of code rights also solidifies the originally accepted licensing terms, as changing the license now requires obtaining personal consent from each developer who has not transferred rights to the FSF. At the same time, the Glibc code continues to be distributed under the 'LGPLv2.1 or later' license, allowing for transitions to newer LGPL versions without additional agreements. Since the rights to most of the code remain with the FSF, this organization continues to act as a guarantor for the distribution of Glibc code only under free copyleft licenses. For example, the FSF can block attempts to introduce dual/commercial licensing or the release of closed proprietary products under separate agreements with the code authors.
Among the drawbacks of abandoning centralized management of code rights is the confusion that arises when agreeing on licensing issues. Previously, all claims of licensing violations were resolved through interaction with a single organization, but now the source of violations, including unintentional ones, becomes unpredictable and requires agreement with each individual participant. An example is given with the Linux kernel, where individual kernel developers initiate lawsuits, including for personal gain.
Source: opennet.ru
