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by throwhypothetic 2060 days ago
That much I understand, but what's the default license if the contributors didn't specify a license with their contributions? Is it implied that their contribution is licensed according to the full project's license?

Much of the discussion is assuming that because the project was AGPL, then the various contributions were AGPL as well. Whether or not that's the case is my question.

2 comments

IANAL, but my understanding is that if their contribution is a derivative work (as most would clearly be), they would be subject to the same license restrictions that restricted their access to the original project. I.e. they had no permission to create the derivative work, and thus no right to release it under any license. If the contribution isn't a derivative work, then the project shouldn't be accepting it without a copyright assignment or license.
That would make sense, but then what are 'Contributor Licence Agreement's for?
If you contribute to a GPL project, your contribution is licensed under GPL, but it's your copyright, not the project owners. The Contributor License Agreement transfers the copyright from you to the project owner, so they may re-license (or dual license) in the future.
Assuming the project specified the license as AGPL, the contributions would be under AGPL as well.

Note that the project currently doesn't state any license (there's no license.md). No idea if there was a license specified before when the contributions were made.