Instead of being a prick like the other responder I'm going to give you a half informed understanding. Basically nothing. Lots of projects that are used on a daily basis in production have no maintainers. There is a web UI showing the number of Debian packages with no active maintainer.
Not that I don't believe that's entirely possible, but do you have a link to something demonstrating this behavior? A _very_ cursory google search didn't come up with anything immediately.
Grafana requires you to sign a CLA before they will accept any work, which can be really expensive (unless you have in-house lawyers or don't care about understanding the real ramifications of a contract): https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/developers/cla/
This appears to be a 7 clause contract written in good faith to ensure Grafana Labs can continue building a product and service offering around their open source project after accepting your contribution.
Am I missing something? Do you have any specific problems with the CLA? Is there an alternative option to a CLA that ensures the original copyright owner can continue offering the code base under multiple licenses after accepting an external contribution?
Subject to which licenses? The current license? Is Grafana obligated to keep the licenses they distribute the current software under unmodified forever after you contribute? Do they loose their right to modify the license of the codebase with your contribution? If they decide to move it to GPL, do they need to get your permission first? If they decide to take the project closed source, do they need your permission? Can you sue for damages if they don’t get your permission first?
Your good faith doesn’t hold up in court and I understand why they’d want to clarify ownership of the contributions. Just because we’ve always done it this way doesn’t mean people aren’t open to liability. Just because another project accepts the risk of a random contributor winning a lawsuit against them doesn’t mean Grafana should. I’m surprised CLAs aren’t more common.
I was personally surprised at how generous their CLA was with ownership rights for you and your contribution to the project. You retain a lot when contributing.
Do you also run every single EULA through your lawyers?
CLAs are becoming common because litigation is becoming common. It's a product of our times and mostly a safeguard for companies in case a person is able to slip in some malevolent code or write hate speech in docs, or if someone tries to claim copyright on docs/code.
I don't know. Do you really know what you're giving up by signing these? I'd have to study CLAs and hope that I am interpreting them correctly within our respective jurisdictions, or ask a lawyer.
All of this stands in the way of contributing. And this is their decision to make, of course, but it is hostile to would-be contributors.
If you don't understand the legal implications of the license and CLA, please don't start rumours like "Grafana discourages contributions from the community, even for its documentation".
I could try explain to you what the purpose of a CLA is, but you could also easily put in the effort by going on Google.
Make sure to also look into the implications of contributing code with an OSS license, any license. That's as much contract as a CLA is.
I mean, this flatly contradicts this line in the CLA:
> Except for the license granted herein to Grafana Labs and recipients of software distributed by Grafana Labs, You reserve all right, title, and interest in and to Your Contributions. [emphasis mine]
You can always use the version of the code your contributions went into. You still own the code you wrote, and still retain the rest of theirs under its original license. You're just not entitled to future versions of the source like a copyleft license without a CLA would grant.
I understand not being excited to serve corporate interests (that's what a CLA does), but posting intellectually uncurious flamebait as a result makes for boring reading.
I do, actually. It looks like a standard CLA. It grants them a perpetual license to whatever code you're contributing and allows them to use it as they please, and not affecting any of your other rights. There's also some stuff in there about you only contributing code that you actually have the right to contribute, and how to manage edge cases around that. It's fairly standard when someone intends to be able to use your contribution as part of a greater open-core / closed-source distribution and to be able to simplify licensing matters. They have to protect their own interests and they're doing so in a manner that basically doesn't affect you at all.
Do you hire a lawyer any time you encounter an unfamiliar OSS license? I assume you don't, or you'd have a hard time using any modern packaging ecosystem.
I personally prefer a heftier, thicker pencil as the skinnier ones make my hands cramp up a little after a lot of writing (something . I do have some drafting pencils from a different brand (nothing spectacular) but they're mostly relegated to my art supplies drawer.
In this case Swift is being used on the server, so that could be an officially supported platform[0] which if I recall correctly is macOS, Ubuntu, CentOS, Amazon Linux 2, and Windows as of Swift 5.3.
So I'm on macOS using Safari for web browsing, chrome for work (web app + backend). I'm on the younger side so chrome has been omnipresent. I do not mean to understate the importance of privacy in the modern web, so don't misunderstand my question. Why would someone, as a developer and a user, want to use Firefox over Safari (mostly) and Chrome (for work).
> I do not mean to understate the importance of privacy in the modern web
> Why would someone, as a developer and a user, want to use Firefox over Safari (mostly) and Chrome (for work).
You wrote the answer before the question. Safari might have users' best interest at heart, but anything that stops an advertising company's browser from dominating the market is a good thing.
Maybe we need to coin "vendor-purpose browser" as well? All of the big three are, to some extent. And now, one has to think of the motives behind each vendor.
Hint: I'll stay on Firefox. And I even use other browsers sometimes, that just support some HTML (elinks, dillo...) on underpowered systems.
Maybe we just need more underpowered systems?
I mean in practice you can also list links to your site on the Apple App Store but you aren’t allowed to mention a cheaper price or another purchasing option.
