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

Spell it out the first time

[tepples]

Why doesn't the summary for articles like these spell out unfamiliar abbreviations such as "contributor license agreement"?

Re:Spell it out the first time

[Phroggy]

I used to expect a lot more from Slashdot, but now that none of the old-guard are left it's steadily and inexorably slipping in the same fashion that kuro5hin, The Register, and other tech sites have slipped.

The "old guard" editors didn't know how to do their jobs either. Note my user ID; I remember. I come here for the comments, not the articles.

Re:Spell it out the first time

[synaptik]

Yes; but back then it was because they were amateurs, doing this for a hobby.

Re:Spell it out the first time

[dreamchaser]

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

Just a guess, but it worked for me! No whinging here about such a trivial matter. I mean, if you are seeing this site anyway, you are definitely online...

That's a bullshit answer. It is standard practice in good writing to say what an acronym or abbreviation means the first time it's used. Afterwards using the shortened version is just fine.

Re:Spell it out the first time

[zoward]

Also, the Slashdot editors need to understand that when they don't spell out these acronyms the first time they use them, the first half of the comments section is going be discussing the lack of proper acronym definition and poor editorial skills instead of, you know, the actual article content. Just sayin'.