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    Great question! The Apache license has a clause saying contributions have to be under apache as well, but not so sure about the GPL. I would assume that since the pull request would have the original license file, the fork would be under that license too. Regardless, there contributions would have to be under the GPL as well, as it could be viewed that it was distributed publicly on GitHub. Mind you, most large projects will have things known as contributor agreements, that need to be signed for this kind of issue. Either they license, or assign copyright to the original devs. Commented Mar 6, 2016 at 21:46
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    I just found that Gihub has recently started a default CLA (Contributor License Agreement) for each PR that is submitted. This includes a patent grant and a irrevocable copyright license to reproduce to both project maintainers and Github! Here is relevant discussion link. But you are right, Apache's way is even better as it sets the CLA terms explicitly in the main license itself. I hope there is something similar for GPL too. Commented Mar 6, 2016 at 22:00
  • As per this comment, A GNU contributor is required to sign an actual dead-tree paper and send it by snail mail. In light of that, the GitHub CLA process is quite smooth.. I hope that is an exaggeration! Commented Mar 6, 2016 at 22:06
  • @PrahladYeri, that is for people who want to contribute to the FSF owned projects, where the FSF wants to retain all copyrights. To ask for the copyright is quite different than what OP is asking about. Commented Mar 7, 2016 at 1:42
  • @vonbrand, Indeed. Similarly, it also seems that the Github CLA I mentioned in the earlier comment applies to Github's own enterprise projects, not just all projects on Github. But someone needs to confirm that. Commented Mar 8, 2016 at 15:41