[Freeipa-devel] CLA or contribution policy?

[Simo Sorce]

On Mon, 2009-06-29 at 17:25 -0700, Karsten Wade wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 12:37:10PM -0400, Dmitri Pal wrote:
> > Karsten Wade wrote:
> > > 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.
> > >   
> > I might be wrong but I do not think anyone looked at the problem this way.
> 
> I believe you are right.  When FreeIPA was forming, the folks in Legal
> handling it were new to Red Hat and took a reasonable (I think)
> approach of re-using the Fedora CLA.
> 
> > Some good guidance on the matter will be helpful.
> 
> There have always been some folks who cannot or will not
> sign/click-agree to a CLA, regardless of how easy it is.
> 
> Do any of you have stories about the FreeIPA CLA that you can share?
> Any positive or negative experiences?

We had one not so positive experience. With one of the first contributor
it took substantial pain and time to get his employer to allow him to
sign away rights with the CLA. The employer had no problem with him
contributing code to free software projects under the GPL or other
licenses though.

The problem with CLA is that it may require a substantial investment of
time both for the developer and the company he is employed with, that
may scare off contributors that are not willing to suffer that pain.

> > What does freeIPA project wants? Good question.
> > I think the answer lays somewhere along the lines of:
> > * It wants to be sufficiently legally covered
> > * Does not want to create obstacles to contribution
> > * Does not want to affiliate itself with a specific distribution.
> 
> Just as a place to start gathering and sorting such answers:
> 
> http://freeipa.org/page/CLA_or_contribution_policy
> 
> > Any ideas how that can be translated into appropriate CLI or policy?
> 
> Let's start by listing what we want and do not want, here and then on
> to that wiki page.  To provide more balance, I am going to take a
> related discussion to the freeipa-users list; anyone interested in
> participation and such can give some input.  I can then use my magic
> writer powers and come up with a strawman for us to set fire to.
> 
> Even if our agreed upon language isn't what the lawyers provide,
> having a few paragraphs that we have consensus on means we are sending
> a single, clear message to Legal they can work with.

Thanks, this will be very useful.

Simo.

-- 
Simo Sorce * Red Hat, Inc * New York