Linus Torvalds: Any CLA Is Fundamentally Broken

sfcrazy writes "The controversy over Canonical's Contributor License Agreement (CLA) has once again surfaced. While Matthew Garrett raises valid points about the flaws in Canonical's CLAs, Linus Torvalds says 'To be fair, people just like hating on Canonical. The FSF and Apache Foundation CLA's are pretty much equally broken. And they may not be broken because of any relicencing, but because the copyright assignment paperwork ends up basically killing the community. Basically, with a CLA, you don't get the kind of "long tail" that the kernel has of random drive-by patches. And since that's how lots of people try the waters, any CLA at all – changing the license or not – is fundamentally broken.'"

Comments

CLA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Canadian Lacrosse Association
Canadian Library Association
Caprivi Liberation Army
Carry Look-Ahead Adder
Causal layered analysis
Certified Legal Assistant
Cigarette Lighter Adapter
Civil Liberties Association
Communist League of America
Conjugated linoleic acid
Contributor License Agreement
Cuban Liberator Army

Re:Spell it out the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess CLA clearly doesn't stand for "Clear and Labeled Acronym"...

Re:Spell it out the first time

[icebike]

I'm pretty sure they were talking about Conjugated linoleic acid. After all, that is the number one hit in google.

CLA

[ZackSchil]

Yes of course, the CLA. I have long hated CLAs. CLAs are a problem and someone should do something about the CLAs.

Re:CLA

[aix tom]

CLAatu barada nikto.

'nuff said.

Re:Spell it out the first time

[bob_super]

I was going for Chlamydia, Lupus and AIDS, and then I remembered that House has been finished for a while.

Re:Spell it out the first time

[Chuck Chunder]

Cryptic Letter Algorithm?

Re:Spell it out the first time

[kesuki]

Complete
Loss
Altogether
google is worthless urban dictionary equally so, and it's not in the jargon file. this is classic slashdot, making up acronyms no one can figure out. wikipedia had the best page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLA
but i can't figure out how a command line argument is related.

Re:Spell it out the first time

[lgw]

Chlamydia, Lupus and AIDS

What are "better things than Dice's editing", Alex?

Re:Spell it out the first time

[CauseBy]

Seriously. I've been reading since 1999 (under different accounts) and trust me, the editing was definitely even worse back then. We used to have mis-spelled words, broken links, and sentences the cut off in the mi

Re:Spell it out the first time

[haruchai]

I was wondering how much Linus knows about Conjugated Linoleic Acids.

Re:Spell it out the first time

[ShanghaiBill]

Because they hope your interest will fuel the very slightest bit of initiative, like the ~5 seconds it takes to Google it?

I tried Googling it. Google said it meant "Conjugated Linoleic Acid". According to the linked Wikipedia article, it is high in trans-fat, so it is a good thing that Linus doesn't care for the stuff.

Re:Spell it out the first time

[Rob Riggs]

If you want news and articles, honestly Yahoo's News is not too bad.

And if you need personal or professional advise, there's no better place than Yahoo! Answers."

Re:Spell it out the first time

[Minwee]

Ooo...Maybe we should get Watson to replace the /. editors? Brilliant!

If Watson's busy, I would settle for ELIZA.

Re:Spell it out the first time

[sconeu]

Tell me about settle for ELIZA?

Re:Spell it out the first time

[gmhowell]

Please, you four digit guys are so old that Alzheimer's is kicking in and you don't really remember what things used to be like. People with five digit ID's, OTOH, have been around a while yet are still young and sexy without a brain full of swiss cheese.