Unusual CONTRIBUTING.md?

[Adafede]

In the frame of my review for openjournals/joss-reviews#7313.

I am used to repositories using the classical CONTRIBUTING.md adopted by GitHub, and not CLA. Is there any particular reason for using it? I genuinely don't know and so maybe this is fully justified, just felt unusual.

[Y0dler]

This was a decision by our institute (or possibly the research center in general, I'm not entirely sure about that) and the CLA was added to all of our Python packages under the JuBiotech umbrella. The point is – as far as I know – to enable the institute to e.g. change the license or license software out to a company etc. without requiring the consent of every person who contributed to the program at some point.

So, I don't think we can change this. If it is very important we could perhaps add a CONTRIBUTING.md and refer to the CLA in it?

[Adafede]

Thank you for the explanation, all good!