Discuss replacing CLA with a DCO

[vsund]

Recently GitLab had a blog post discussing whether a CLA is the best legal method for open source projects to accept 3rd party contributions.

The main point is that CLA tend to be more restrictive as needed and contributors get bothered with legal terms, when just wanting to contribute some stuff (especially important for small fixes like typos).

A DCO gives the developers more freedom and flexibility with their contribution and workflow. But the blog post from above makes some great points why a DCO might be the better way.

For example the folks from matrix.org have implemented this in their contributing doc.

Just found out that git has a built-in flag, which adds this to the bottom of your commit:

-s, --signoff

    Add Signed-off-by line by the committer at the end of the commit log message. The meaning of a signoff depends on the project, but it typically certifies that
    committer has the rights to submit this work under the same license and agrees to a Developer Certificate of Origin (see http://developercertificate.org/ for
    more information).

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Used abbreviations:

• DCO is "Developer's certificate of origin".
• CLA is "Contributor license agreement".