We sent out several requests over the last days and more will come - all individual and hand-crafted mails :). If you are not contacted but contributed in the past please let us know!
The the tool we used before (CLAhub), didn’t properly work for a few months now and we need a new process for this and this is now documented here.
While doing so, we were asked why a CLA is necessary at all. I like this answer but give here our reasoning too.
Why do we need a CLA?
To make the usage of the GraphHopper routing engine for commercial purposes more ‘secure’. I.e. we make sure that all contributors agree to the Apache License 2.0 when they do their contributions. Therefor all companies using GraphHopper have a kind of a warranty. This is a normal process for open source communities, e.g. all Apache projects require contributors to sign their CLA.
Furthermore we have now a code of conduct included, which is for most people ‘obvious’ to behave like this but very important for a prosper, growing and fair open source community.
Do I still own the contribution?
Yes.
Other open source projects with a stricter licensing and a dual licensing business strategy furthermore allow the company to re-license e.g. a GPL contribution to their commercial license to allow them to sell the whole product also under the commercial license. We don’t do and don’t need this.