question about contributor copyright waivers

[Kyle]

Is it safe to state clearly, either by modifying the text of the Unlicense to include contributors, or by making a note in a separate location, that anyone who contributes code or documentation to my project understands that they have agreed to waive their copyrights when they agree to submit their contribution, or is it still better to collect a waiver of copyright from each individual contributor? I suppose the waivers could be collected along with individual names in a CONTRIBUTORS file, but is it really necessary in the days of implied agreement, e.g. "by using this, you agree to the terms and conditions..." this may seem like a rather silly question, but I really don't have the ability to pay lawyers in case something goes wrong, so I guess I just need to be sure all my bases are covered in the simplest way possible. Thanks for any advice.
~Kyle
Sent from my Wishdroid! :)

[Ben Lavender]

For rdf.rb, we did a GNU-ish 'official agreements from big contributors, don't worry about it for a few lines of fixes'. We made them post the agreements to a mailing list. We got some companies to vaguely sponsor their employees' letters.

Beyond that, nobody ever sued anyone so I doubt anyone can give useful legal advice here.

Ben

--
Ben Lavender | b...@dydra.com | http://dydra.com
twitter/github: bhuga | +15047221016

[Kyle]

OK, well that pretty much answers my question. I can setup a mailing
list very easily. I was just trying to make contributing as painless for
the contributor as possible, and I thought an implied waiver would do
that, but it does seem better to have a mailing list where major
contributors can post their individual waivers for archival. From your
project, it looks like the implied waiver should be fine for small
patches, so I'll likely document that in my policies for contributing
code. Looks like I should be safe saying something like:

"By contributing code to this project, you agree to waive your
copyrights and to place your contribution into the public domain. For
patches consisting of 5 lines of code or more, please post an official
waiver of copyright to the mailing list at ..."

I would link to something similar to the SQLite waiver that can be
copied and pasted into the email that the individual major contributor
would send to the list along with his/her name. Does this cover all my
bases? It seems strange to live in a time where it is easier to assert
copyright restrictions than to allow people the freedom to use my code
without fear. Thanks much for the help.
~Kyle

[Dāvis Mosāns]

From first day I already added this to my README (https://github.com/davispuh/CLI-Console)
 

Warning: By sending pull request to this repository you dedicate any and all copyright interest in pull request (code files and all other) to the public domain. (files will be in public domain even if pull request doesn't get merged)

Also before sending pull request you acknowledge that you own all copyrights or have authorization to dedicate them to public domain.

If you don't want to dedicate code to public domain or if you're not allowed to (eg. you don't own required copyrights) then DON'T send pull request.

It's very simple. It implies that by clicking "Send Pull Request" you agree to terms.
IANAL, but IMHO it serves same as all those "I accept" checkboxes which are for websites.