It’s just a reassurance for you as a contributor and for blender as project and publisher that you have the right to publish the contribution and are not violating any copyright knowingly. It might be trivial for patches and so on, but for adding bigger or new feature for example in my opinion it’s a good thing to double check.
Have i used company code for my private projects? Sometimes yes. Have i published it? Not yet, but might forget and a reminder to not do so is a good thing. A CLA makes you more concious about the actions you take. It protects you by double checking and blender from unnecessary lawsuits which could have been prevented. Don’t assume the reviewers know whether the code you commit is protected otherwise.
The CLA also gives you additional access to your rights, e.g. having the copyright in your name as stated in the main post. Meaning you can use and build upon your feature at commit state for any other purpose without the gpl license infecting your project as you are the og license holder.
note: i’m not a lawyer and thus above statements might be wrong or too much simplified, it’s just my understanding of oss licensing and adding a cla.
Let’s take a look at the CLA from the first post. The following parts are not new when you compare with the screenshot and the fact that when signing up to Blender ID, the BF already has your (nick)name and a mail address:
You agree to license your contribution under a compatible license
Name or Nickname
Mail Address
Keep Copyright or transfer it to the BF
The new parts are:
Some information what the CLA is
You certify that the contribution is your own and you have the right to submit it
On behalf of a corporation?
Electronic Signature
I don’t see anything that worries me in there and it would not have stopped me from submitting my first patch 15 years ago.
I do not question the need to ensure that the contributor agrees to participate in the Blender project under the condition of respecting the GPL license; neither that there’s a logical interest in keeping the contributor identity (name/nickname/email) in a file.
It’s just that some people can be intimidated by a text full of legal terms (for example: Google CLA) and the fact that they’ll have to confirm their agreement with an electronic signature.
There’s a difference between reading a message they have to tacitly agree with (without any action from the user) and actively confirm their agreement with an online signature.
I just fear there will be less external contributions from now on.
There is but I’d argue that the latter is more transparent. People are already subject to copyright law, GPL license etc. Being clear about things is good.
