> EDIT: Mea culpa. I have found additional documentation that conflicts and reveals that there is now an an additional copyright-assignment track. See my soon-to-appear reply.
> Assignment and Contribution Models. The .NET Foundation uses either an assignment model or a contribution model for on-boarding new projects. Under the assignment model, a project transfers ownership of the copyright to the .NET Foundation. Under the contribution model, a project retains ownership of the copyright, but grants the .NET Foundation a broad license to the project’s code and other intellectual property. The project also confirms that the project’s submissions to .NET Foundation are its own original work (there are also instructions for any third party materials that might be included).
Here is the best part, if you dig a little deeper into the issues and pull requests, you will find out that the .NET Foundation people have been removing the contribution option from the blank agreements, leaving only the assignment option.
Lol! Unsurprisingly, this upset some of the developers on the projects, as they were unclear about how this affected them.
The consequences seem foreseeable and I don't understand why the DNF would do that. The difference between copyright licensing and copyright assignment is a big deal. If you think it makes strategic sense to transition (which I don't understand either), to my mind you'd better be loud and bold, overcommunicating in order to maintain trust — with project founders, contributors, and the broader community (including outsiders like you (?) and me).
FWIW, this would never happen at the ASF. The 800 or so Members of the ASF (who elect the Board) are drawn from the projects, so the kind of people who are upset at the DNF would be in a position to take action at the ASF (by electing a different board).
On https://dotnetfoundation.org/projects/submit I found the following:
> Assignment and Contribution Models. The .NET Foundation uses either an assignment model or a contribution model for on-boarding new projects. Under the assignment model, a project transfers ownership of the copyright to the .NET Foundation. Under the contribution model, a project retains ownership of the copyright, but grants the .NET Foundation a broad license to the project’s code and other intellectual property. The project also confirms that the project’s submissions to .NET Foundation are its own original work (there are also instructions for any third party materials that might be included).
I regret my error.