On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 8:47 AM, Stefano Maffulli <stefano@openstack.org> wrote:

I'd like to re-frame the conversation on the practical effects that the
current processes have on new contributors and work towards solutions.
The problem is:

One of the Foundation's objective is to help gain contributions from
operators; current processes for contributing to OpenStack seem to be
harming this objective.

So far we have a proposal to

- write a 'legal deed' for the CLA
- keep a handy reassuring message to people 'afraid' of CLA's legalese

I also see a consensus forming about the need to redefine/clarify the
concept of ATC...

On 04/22/2014 08:41 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
> I have to emphasize how unusual I believe this policy is. I have been
> trying to find some example of an open source project-related
> membership foundation (there aren't too many of these) with a similar

> policy, with no success. [...]

I see no major problem redefining (clarify) the concept of ATC and
Individual Members but this deserves its own separate thread to
investigate the ramifications.

I'd like to see this investigation happen. In responses to the doc contributor survey, people have mentioned git/gerrit as a barrier to contributing to docs. They want to make OpenStack docs better but won't necessarily shepherd a patch through or review patches in gerrit. They contribute in other ways by logging doc bugs, testing instructions, and writing blog entries about their findings.

I can envision a world where we have two equally important classes of contributors: "I make OpenStack and contribute" and "I use OpenStack and contribute" -- and I sense that providing an alternative to the CLA and its responsibilities may be one way to help raise up the number of contributions from users.

Anne

> Also, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the Foundation
> might someday charge a fee for Individual memberships. If that ever
> happened, and the policy remained in place, I believe it would look
> really bad.

It would be so bad that it won't happen, realistically... it's as likely
to happen as charging for downloads.

Moving forward, maybe we should start discussing how we can split the
ATC role from the 'plain' contributor role. I will take a shot at
writing a 'license deed' to submit here for evaluation. Any other thoughts?

/stef

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