Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by candiddevmike 1243 days ago
One reason would be a CLA. Presumably to contribute to their main repo, you need to sign a CLA to ensure they can relicense this thing as needed. A separate fork wouldn't have that requirement, or shouldn't if it's in good faith.
3 comments

That could be a reason, but I don't see a CLA in their contributing guide[1].

[1] https://github.com/calcom/cal.com/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md

IANAL, but that could have some interesting implications for their enterprise licensing/builds I believe. They can't relicense the code for their enterprise builds, so it stays AGPL due to linking/AGPL infection. Would be an interesting court case.
I've contributed to this repo (and I also self host Calendly) and didn't have to sign anything.

It _is_ a pain to self-host, but unlike claims elsewhere in this thread I do also self-host the API and database.

> and I also self host Calendly)

Is the core of Calendly open-source?

I skimmed their repos but it looks like they don't include the "secret sauce" to self-hosting your own event+booking platform: https://github.com/orgs/calendly/repositories

Why would you not want such an agreement? It means the main maintainer(s) have standing if there is a license dispute.
IANAL. As a contributor? It means the company can relicense my contributions into a license that is wildly different from their current one (including no license/copyright). It affords me no benefit.

There are CLA alternatives like the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) that ensure the company has the "legal standing" to accept a contribution without infringing on copyright, but it doesn't give them the ability to relicense.

> It affords me no benefit.

Sure they could relicense it to something wildly different, but they can't retroactively take back old versions of it, so you can still run it as it was when you made the contributions.

I wish nobody required CLAs, but I'm glad that there are products like Cal that would (assumedly) be closed contribution otherwise due to (real or perceived) legal risk.

> It affords me no benefit.

It means they can sue for open source license violations on your behalf, something that's a bit harder if they don't actually wholly own the copyright.