Open Stack

Hi Alice!!  Nice to know I am not the only one hanging out on this list and
not responding much.  Hope all's well with you!

As it relates to IP I guess I do have a few concerns with the trajectory of
this discussion.   I apologize if I am missing something obvious and if so
feel free to disregard this...

For example how do we determine what  "trivial contribution" is?  Who makes
that call?  Would it be the same to all participants?  Why are IBM and HP
and others who have signed the CLA held to a different standard and denied
the ability to make trivial contributions (not that I think we should be
able to make them I don't think they should be made at all) but if some can
make them why not all?

Most importantly it is the patent IP I think we should be worried about.
What if that line or two of code trivially contributed completes the steps
of a patent claim held by the contributer's company that then makes open
stack users infringers of that code?  Remember our committee discussions
about contributors licenses which extend not only to the code they
contribute but its combination with the work?  This is exactly the same
point.  Even a trivial contribution  in terms of size or function can
render a body of code infringing.  I think that one of the great benefits
of the  CLA is that it addresses that scenario.  So in my view we need to
think long and hard about letting companies take a pass on what everyone
else has agreed to lest we find ourselves facing patent  claims based on
trivial additions.   I would not expect (though please correct me if I am
wrong) that someone planning on doing a patent clearance against the
contributor when such contributions are made before they are deemed
trivial?  I would think that would be more than a trivial undertaking.

Sorry if I am missing something that covers us for patents but I think I
have this right.

Marc A. Ehrlich






From:	"Alice King" <alice at alicelkingpc.com>
To:	"'Richard Fontana'" <rfontana at redhat.com>,
            <legal-discuss at lists.openstack.org>,
Date:	04/22/2014 08:55 PM
Subject:	Re: [legal-discuss] Trivial contributions and CLAs



Thank you Richard.  That helps put it in perspective.

The process needs to permit a trusted person to exercise discretion in edge
cases like this.  That is true of every process involving human
interaction.
The Foundation Bylaws contemplate the Board giving this kind of edge-case
discretion to the Executive Director.

I don't see that there is much risk around intellectual property in this
kind of contribution.  Who would make a claim?  There is a secondary risk
that the project is viewed as being lax on IP issues generally, which would
scare off some users.  I think this is also unlikely.  My impression is
that
the project is viewed as exercising an abundance of caution.

The kind of participation represented by this contribution is valuable.
Reward significantly outweighs risk.

Still on the list and felt like chiming in!

Alice


-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Fontana [mailto:rfontana at redhat.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2014 7:32 PM
To: legal-discuss at lists.openstack.org
Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Trivial contributions and CLAs

For anyone on this list not accustomed to looking at such things, I think
it
might be interesting to point out what this patch actually is and what
Stefano means by triviality (even though the CLA may not be the relevant
issue in this instance, the issue of contribution process around trivial
patches is the larger issue that Stefano was raising):

The patch would cause one existing line in one file:

    options = sorted([(ip.id, ip.ip) for ip in ips if not ip.port_id])

to be replaced with this:

    options = sorted([(ip.id, ip.ip) for ip in ips if not ip.port_id],
key=lambda ip: ip[1])

That is: all this patch does is add the following text to one line of a
file:
  ", key=lambda ip: ip[1]"
The file itself contains about ~100 lines of code, and Horizon, the
relevant
project, contains, I believe, about 2000 files.

 - RF


Stefano wrote:
> I have been notified of another very small patch that is left in a
> limbo, with the author not allowed to sign the CLA and the developers
> stuck in unknown legal territory. You can read more about it on
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1308984
>
>  From what I can see, the patch is trivial and shouldn't even be
copyrightable but the person spotting the issue and fixing it is not
comfortable signing the CLAs. Can any other developer copy the patch and
put
it into our trunk? Until when is this sort of behaviour safe?
>
> We're getting more of these small blockers and I think it's already a
problem. Having to sign a Corporate CLA and Individual CLA for a trivial
patch, from an operator (whose job is to run clouds, resulting in small and
rare patches, not to develop large features) can conflict with our effort
to
get more operators involved in OpenStack.
>
> I'm not sure what solutions are available. If we can't change the CLA
processes easily, what else can we do to get small contributions like
these?


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