On Wed, 2014-01-22 at 12:25 -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:
On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 11:27:28AM +0000, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
I think it's time we stepped back and considered all the angles here - not just "drop the CLA", "delete the copyright notices". What do we (the project) want? What are our values?
I'd suggest:
- We want to be able to distribute OpenStack under the Apache License v2, so: - All code to the project must be contributed under the ALv2 - We can incorporate BSD/MIT licensed code from other projects - We can use LGPL, BSD, MIT, etc. licensed libraries; currently, we're being conservative and not using GPL/AGPL libraries
- There is no need for contributors to grant the foundation a special license.
- We copy the kernel's Signed-off-by/DCO method of having all developers who contribute to a patch state they have the right to contribute the patch under ALv2
- We consolidate all copyright notices into a single "copyright multiple authors" notice above the ALv2 header, making it clear the code is directly licensed by the authors under ALv2 without the foundation acting as an intermediary
This is just a strawman idea to draw some comments. What am I missing?
The one thing is my intuition that the lawyers for several of the corporate members of the OpenStack Foundation, and lawyers for the Foundation itself, would object to adoption of the Linux kernel-style DCO. (Though perhaps mainly due to lack of familiarity with the approach and some belief that the CLA system currently in use is a best practice of some sort.) I myself think an unadulterated DCO method is a fine idea, have said so before and feel confident in saying that that would be Red Hat's official view.
I think it's worth having a properly informed discussion involving the Foundation Board and Legal Affairs Committee. To do so, we'd need to pull together some points into a document: - why the CLA process is causing friction - a review of practices adopted by some other large, well known and comparable projects - how OpenStack's process differs from other projects using CLAs, like the ASF - enumerating the perceived benefits and explaining why they are a misconception, not a major benefit or that a similar effect can be achieved differently - a concrete proposal for a change to DCO, including infra changes, education, bylaws amendment, etc. - a FAQ section which anticipates additional concerns people may have I'd take this to the TC first to double-check that there's consensus amongst the contributor community to make a move like this. Unfortunately, there's no quick way to make this happen, but I think if we can get the process moving we should be able to make it happen. Mark.