[OpenLayers-Dev] CC0 Dedication instead of CLA

[christopher.schmidt at nokia.com]

Hi,

It seems that CLAs and CLA management are still a significant hurdle to some
contributors. Instead of always requiring a CLA, what do people think
about instead allowing developers to simply dedicate changes to CC0, and then
we are in a position where we can use the changes without concern over copyright?

The FSF has recently stated that they consider CC0 to be a free software license
compatible with the GPL:

  https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/27081

and has recommended CC0 for code snippets in documentation:

  http://labs.creativecommons.org/2011/05/27/fsf-recommends-cc0-for-code-snippets-in-documentation/

If a user who has written code is willing to simply state "I am the author/copyright
holder of this code and am dedicating it to the public domain under the terms
at http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/." then I can't see any reason
we can't use these works in OpenLayers; especially for very brief snippets of code,
this seems like the best way to move forward, rather than requiring CLAs
that slow down development and impede developer contributions.

Is there anyone who is against such a thing? (Is there anyone who would
find such a change helpful?)

I'll note that this is unlikely to solve the issues found by larger organizations,
especially governmental ones, but it seems like it is a way to skip the 
CLA process for simple contributions.

Thanks,
Chris