[Freeipa-devel] CLA or contribution policy?

[Karsten Wade]

Recently when I was asking around about the contributor license
agreement (CLA) that covers FreeIPA, the Legal man asked, "What does
the FreeIPA project want?  Do they want a full-blown CLA or would a
simpler contribution policy do?"  By asking ourselves this question,
we have a chance to resolve (be happier) about the current CLA, get it
changed to a more useful agreement, or switch entirely to a
declarative policy of some kind.

On one side, an example of a fairly-loose contribution policy is that
of the Linux kernel.  I am having a hard time finding a clear,
canonical reference, but the book by Jon Corbet, "How To Participate
In The Linux Community"[1], lists a few criteria under 'Licensing' in
the first chapter.  In essence: license must be compatible with GPLv2,
no copyright assignments required, only attributable free software is
accepted.

On the other side, an example of a useful CLA is the Fedora Project's,
where FreeIPA's CLA originated.  This large project has contributions
of all types, at all levels, under many different licenses.  One duty
this CLA provides is giving a covering license in the case where a
contribution's license is not specified.  Outside of already licensed
packages, this situation is common in Fedora -- people just make edits
to the wiki without specifying one license or the other, so it falls
under the wiki default license.  The CLA has a purpose of helping to
govern that situation, aiui.

What should FreeIPA's policy be?

IANAL, TINLA, thanks,

- Karsten 

[1] http://ldn.linuxfoundation.org/book/1-a-guide-kernel-development-process
-- 
Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener
http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
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