New Contributer License Agreement requirement for contributors?

Software Support
1

I notice that very recently I am now required to “sign” a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) when I create pull requests against ojs (and pkp-lib) on github.
I cannot seem to find any trace of this new requirement being announced or justified. Did I just miss it or was the intent really to introduce this silently?

2

Hi @tgc99,

There’s a description here in plainer language: https://pkp.sfu.ca/contributor-license-agreement/

Essentially this is part of ensuring that we have the rights to change the software license over to GPLv3 at some point in the near future, rather than the older GPLv2.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

3

It’s not that I disagree with your motives however I am disappointed in the (to my knowledge at least) complete lack of communication of your intent in preparation for this change in requirements.

4

Hi @tgc99,

That’s a fair criticism. It’s something we’ve been working on gradually for a number of months with our Technical Committee (which consists of community members), but we should have announced more broadly that we were doing this.

I’m happy to take your feedback about this and discuss it with the rest of the group – on anything he way we communicated the change in advance (or didn’t), or the contents of the document, etc. We certainly don’t want to be surprising the contributor community.

Thanks,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team