Hi Jeremy and everyone. I am working on this question for the Foundation. I have talked with Kevin and am doing some legal leg work. I will get in touch with Stefano. Welcome back from the Summit! Thank you, Alice King -----Original Message----- From: Jeremy Stanley [mailto:fungi@yuggoth.org] Sent: Sunday, November 10, 2013 5:32 PM To: Fox, Kevin M Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. On 2013-11-06 15:11:44 -0800 (-0800), Fox, Kevin M wrote:

I'm trying to contribute something and have run into some snags. See email below. Steve told me that the Foundation is the one needing to receive this. I tried but got no response so I'm forwarding it to the legal list.

Thanks! You picked an unfortunate week to raise questions since most of us are in Hong Kong for our semi-annual conference and design summit, but I suspect you'll get more responses soon. I'll also bring this to Stefano Maffulli's attention since he tends to deal with most of the community interaction on this point.

I've been looking through the individual contributor level agreement and in section 7 it mentions contacting the project manager, which I think is you for heat? [...]

The second sentence of the clarifying paragraph at the beginning of the ICLA defines it as, "OpenStack Foundation as Project manager (the 'Project Manager')."

* I work for a national lab and while the contribution was created by us government funds and owned by the us government, we are operated by a corporation, Battelle and I am technically a Battelle employee. There really isn't an agreement that seems to cover this case other then the individual agreement with a contribution from others.

* All parts of the work that aren't derived directly from existing heat-templates has been put in the public domain.

I think the contributors at JHUAPL are in a similar situation and contribute under a USGCLA, but Stefano should be able to clarify how that works. -- Jeremy Stanley _______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

Thank you Steve. I will keep that in mind as a fall back. -----Original Message----- From: Steven Dake [mailto:sdake@redhat.com] Sent: Monday, November 11, 2013 9:36 AM To: Alice King; 'Jeremy Stanley'; 'Fox, Kevin M' Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. On 11/11/2013 06:16 AM, Alice King wrote:

Hi Jeremy and everyone. I am working on this question for the Foundation. I have talked with Kevin and am doing some legal leg work. I will get in touch with Stefano.

Welcome back from the Summit!

Thank you,

Alice King Alice,

Thank you for your attention in this matter. I think Kevin's contributions would be great to have in Heat from a technical perspective, and am hopeful a workable legal solution can be found. I spoke with Kevin at length on IRC about possilities to help his org contribute the patches as reviews, but his management has already gone the extra mile to even achieve the current public domain license the code already has and can't justify further time/resource investment running it through their legal machine. One solution we came up with if we hit a roadblock with your research is to find a Nasa engineer somewhere to facilitate the contribution since they have signed the corporate CLA and this would work with the pnnnl legal requirements. I'm not an attorney however, so we were just brainstorming ideas, rather then making commitments :) Something to think about if the answer is no. Regards -steve

-----Original Message----- From: Jeremy Stanley [mailto:fungi@yuggoth.org] Sent: Sunday, November 10, 2013 5:32 PM To: Fox, Kevin M Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag.

...

I'm trying to contribute something and have run into some snags. See email below. Steve told me that the Foundation is the one needing to receive this. I tried but got no response so I'm forwarding it to the legal list. Thanks! You picked an unfortunate week to raise questions since most of us are in Hong Kong for our semi-annual conference and design summit, but I suspect you'll get more responses soon. I'll also bring

On 2013-11-06 15:11:44 -0800 (-0800), Fox, Kevin M wrote: this to Stefano Maffulli's attention since he tends to deal with most of the community interaction on this point.

...

I've been looking through the individual contributor level agreement and in section 7 it mentions contacting the project manager, which I think is you for heat? [...]

The second sentence of the clarifying paragraph at the beginning of the ICLA defines it as, "OpenStack Foundation as Project manager (the 'Project Manager')."

...

* I work for a national lab and while the contribution was created by us government funds and owned by the us government, we are operated by a corporation, Battelle and I am technically a Battelle employee. There really isn't an agreement that seems to cover this case other then the individual agreement with a contribution from others.

* All parts of the work that aren't derived directly from existing heat-templates has been put in the public domain. I think the contributors at JHUAPL are in a similar situation and contribute under a USGCLA, but Stefano should be able to clarify how that

works.

-- Jeremy Stanley

_______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

_______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

Hi Alice, Kevin, Kevin, a couple of questions: Is this a one-time contribution or do you expect to be making further contributions to OpenStack? Am I correct that this is specifically what you've been trying to contribute? https://github.com/EMSL-MSC/heat-templates/commit/1d4ce302313f210ba5dc2a29fa... - Richard On Wed, Dec 04, 2013 at 09:35:34AM -0600, Alice King wrote:

Hi Everyone. I have been taking with Kevin and the attorney for Batelle as a legal representative for the Foundation. Batelle is the contractor who runs the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) where Kevin works. As I understand it, Batelle runs various labs for the US Government in addition to PNNL. http://www.battelle.org/ The Batelle lawyer has explained that they are unable to sign the Apache Corporate CLA because they face significant internal barriers to granting a patent license that could incorporate work at other facilities they manage.

Batelle has offered two suggestions:

1. The Foundation accept the work as public domain work: The Batelle lawyer believes the public domain route is available under rules that permit federal contractors to treat "de minimis" contributions as public domain work.

2. The Foundation accept Kevin's contribution under the Educational Community License, rather than Apache 2.0. The Educational Community License is like the Apache 2.0 license, but with a limit on the patent license to only those works of the individual who created the work, not the entity where the individual works. You can read about the ECL license here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_Community_License

I would appreciate any thoughts anyone has on this issue. I do not favor the public domain treatment because it does not address the patent issues at all. I would also note that the Foundation Bylaws require the Board to approve a contribution other than under the existing CLA's.

It seems likely that issue will come up again, so it would be a good idea to think about this in terms of a "policy."

I hope Batelle, Kevin will jump in with additional information.

Alice King

-----Original Message----- From: Fox, Kevin M [mailto:kevin.fox@pnnl.gov] Sent: Wednesday, November 6, 2013 5:12 PM To: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag.

Hello OpenStack Legal,

I'm trying to contribute something and have run into some snags. See email below. Steve told me that the Foundation is the one needing to receive this. I tried but got no response so I'm forwarding it to the legal list.

Thanks, Kevin ________________________________________ From: Fox, Kevin M Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2013 5:16 PM To: Steve Baker Subject: Heat contribution

Hi Steve,

I've been looking through the individual contributor level agreement and in section 7 it mentions contacting the project manager, which I think is you for heat?

I have a contribution which is for a set of heat templates that make it possible to spawn a scalable, sharded mongodb cluster. It should be of great use to the Trove folks, as well as others.

I've been trying to contribute code for a while and the contributor agreement has made this very difficult.

Long story short: * I work for a national lab and while the contribution was created by us government funds and owned by the us government, we are operated by a corporation, Battelle and I am technically a Battelle employee. There really isn't an agreement that seems to cover this case other then the individual agreement with a contribution from others. * All parts of the work that aren't derived directly from existing heat-templates has been put in the public domain. * No one at the lab has the legal authority to sign a Corporate contributor level agreement. We can't sign a us government contributor agreement since we are technically not the us government. We are contractors that the government gave the code to under the public domain.

Since the code is out there public domain, I believe an individual contributor agreement works via section 7 and I just need to figure out how to get the code to the right person. Is that you?

The work history is: It started out as templates from here: https://mongodb-documentation.readthedocs.org/en/latest/ecosystem/tutorial/a utomate-deployment-with-cloudformation.html "Chris Scheich"<chris@mongodb.com> from 10gen verified it was public domain.

It was modified a bit here: https://github.com/andresdouglas/aws-cfn-mongostack By "Andres Douglas"<andres.douglas@gmail.com> whom I contacted and he also has public domained the work.

I personally modified the templates including some code from the openstack/heat-templates repository and added some original code.

Changes contributed by me has cleared legal and export controls and is under the public domain.

So all licensing is accounted for and should be acceptable to the OpenStack community and being public domain, I should be able to contribute it.

The code is located at the following link. It is Submitted on behalf of a third-party: US Government https://github.com/EMSL-MSC/heat-templates/commit/1d4ce302313f210ba5dc2a29fa a2764db57e45d4

Thanks, Kevin _______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

_______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

On 2013-12-04 11:50:04 -0800 (-0800), Fox, Kevin M wrote:

I'm hoping it will be an ongoing thing. Figuring out a good solution rather then a one off solution would be preferable I think. I'm sure other national labs will run into the same issue since they tend to be ran the same way as we are. [...]

Interestingly, JHUAPL did not express any concerns over patent clauses as far as I'm aware, and their employees have been contributing to OpenStack under the terms of the USGCLA for quite a while. -- Jeremy Stanley

I don't know very much about JHUAPL, but it looks like they may be one organization at one site (website mentions 399-acre self-contained community). Battelle operates many individual national labs spread across the country. This is a different scale of problem I think. Thanks, Kevin ________________________________________ From: Jeremy Stanley [fungi@yuggoth.org] Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2013 3:15 PM To: Fox, Kevin M Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. On 2013-12-04 11:50:04 -0800 (-0800), Fox, Kevin M wrote:

I'm hoping it will be an ongoing thing. Figuring out a good solution rather then a one off solution would be preferable I think. I'm sure other national labs will run into the same issue since they tend to be ran the same way as we are. [...]

Interestingly, JHUAPL did not express any concerns over patent clauses as far as I'm aware, and their employees have been contributing to OpenStack under the terms of the USGCLA for quite a while. -- Jeremy Stanley

On Wed, Dec 04, 2013 at 03:56:05PM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:

Given the obstacles contained in the OpenStack Foundation bylaws IP policy to flexibility in handling inbound contributions, I think the easiest solution (though not the most desirable one) would be for the Executive Director to make "non material amendments" to the Individual (and/or Corporate) CLA so that a federal government contractor not holding copyright on what is being contributed can use such a CLA.

Or perhaps the Executive Director could non-materially revise the US Government CLA to have it cover the case of contributions coming in from contractors? I realize that might seem to contradict the essence of my previous response, but the problem I see here is balancing reduction of contributor red tape against the need for a fair IPR licensing policy. - RF

I think that would work for me. If it sounds good to everyone, we can run it by our lawyers just to be sure. Thanks, Kevin ________________________________________ From: Alice King [alice_king@att.net] Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2013 1:55 PM To: 'Richard Fontana' Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. Thanks Richard. So then Jonathan would make a decision that where both of two conditions were met, a modified version of the Federal Government Contractor CLA would be used. The two conditions would be (i) the work was created by a contractor under a federal government contract, and (ii) the copyright in the work is public domain. I understand that the rule for federal contractors is that they do retain copyright absent some exception or special term in the agreement. In this case, Batelle would have to decide, and represent to the Foundation, that Kevin's work was public domain - presumably under the "de minimis" exception suggested by the Batelle lawyer. If we take this approach, it seems to me that the US Government CLA would be the best CLA to non-materially revise since it already reflects that the copyright is public domain. The non-material revision could be the addition of the sentence that appears in the Educational Community License: "Any patent license granted hereby with respect to contributions by an individual employed by an institution or organization is limited to patent claims where the individual that is the author of the Work is also the inventor of the patent claims licensed, and where the organization or institution has the right to grant such license under applicable grant and research funding agreements. No other express or implied licenses are granted." Is this consistent with what you are thinking might work? Alice -----Original Message----- From: Richard Fontana [mailto:rfontana@redhat.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 4, 2013 3:35 PM To: Alice King Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. On Wed, Dec 04, 2013 at 03:56:05PM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:

Given the obstacles contained in the OpenStack Foundation bylaws IP policy to flexibility in handling inbound contributions, I think the easiest solution (though not the most desirable one) would be for the Executive Director to make "non material amendments" to the Individual (and/or Corporate) CLA so that a federal government contractor not holding copyright on what is being contributed can use such a CLA.

Or perhaps the Executive Director could non-materially revise the US Government CLA to have it cover the case of contributions coming in from contractors? I realize that might seem to contradict the essence of my previous response, but the problem I see here is balancing reduction of contributor red tape against the need for a fair IPR licensing policy. - RF _______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

I was also referring to the OpenStack US Govt. CLA - sorry for the confusion there. Yes, I agree that code created under these circumstances (federal government contractor) will not always be eligible for public domain treatment under the "de minimis" exception, but a federal government contractor could still release the work as public domain through some decision process. Whether or not the copyright is released as public domain does not directly bear on the patent issue, but to my mind it is a sort of rough way to guage how the contributing contractor views the work, and whether there is a patent lurking somewhere that they might assert later. In other words, is it way to test whether it is really just a logistics problem for them to clear the patent license given the left hand, right hand problem, or are they holding onto something they might want to assert later. I don't think contractors like Batelle face the same hurdles on approval to release copyright as public domain as they do for trying to clear a patent license. (I found some helpful information here on this: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/3076/Licensing_and_ Policy_Summit_Report_2007.pdf?sequence=1) But... Maybe including the public domain requirement is too complex and it doesn't line up all that well with the patent issue risk. Maybe instead the "rule" would be that the Foundation Executive Director would have discretion to determine for government funded research institutions whether the burden to the contributing institution of clearing a patent license was disproportionate to the risk to the community of a accepting the contribution, and in those cases authorize the use of a modified Corporate CLA that included the sentence from the ECL limiting the patent license to things created by the same author. This would require a case-by case analysis, but the JHUAPL situation indicates that a case-by-case analysis might be needed to make sure the "rule" was applied sensibly. There is no compelling reason to grant an exception to JHUAPL since they don't have the left hand/right hand problem that Batelle has. -----Original Message----- From: Richard Fontana [mailto:rfontana@redhat.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 4, 2013 10:49 PM To: Alice King Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. On Wed, Dec 04, 2013 at 03:55:39PM -0600, Alice King wrote:

Thanks Richard. So then Jonathan would make a decision that where both of two conditions were met, a modified version of the Federal Government Contractor CLA would be used. The two conditions would be (i) the work was created by a contractor under a federal government contract, and (ii) the copyright in the work is public domain.

I understand that the rule for federal contractors is that they do retain copyright absent some exception or special term in the agreement. In this case, Batelle would have to decide, and represent to the Foundation, that Kevin's work was public domain - presumably under the "de minimis" exception suggested by the Batelle lawyer.

If we take this approach, it seems to me that the US Government CLA would be the best CLA to non-materially revise since it already reflects that the copyright is public domain. The non-material revision could be the addition of the sentence that appears in the Educational Community License: "Any patent license granted hereby with respect to contributions by an individual employed by an institution or organization is limited to patent claims where the individual that is the author of the Work is also the inventor of the patent claims licensed, and where the organization or institution has the right to grant such license under applicable grant and research funding agreements. No other express or implied licenses are granted."

Is this consistent with what you are thinking might work?

Not entirely ... I don't believe that would work as a modification to the US Government CLA. Battelle suggested use of the ECL on the assumption that it would be the entity bound by the CLA, not the government. I was actually imagining an alteration of the US Government CLA https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/GovernmentCLA that explicitly noted that the contribution might consist of work done by federal contractors. It could, perhaps, then be limited to cases where the contractor's work is noncopyrightable/de minimis (as we are assuming is true of Kevin's current work) but this doesn't seem to be generally useful, since we have to assume the more typical case will be that the contractor's contribution is copyrightable. Actually, I just noticed that the existing US Government CLA omits the section 7 language that is in the other CLAs (see Kevin's initial posting in this thread). So perhaps the simplest thing to do is to restore that language to the US Government CLA, or modify it slightly to cover the case of work done by federal contractors. That requires "identifying the complete details of its source and of any license or other restriction (including, but not limited to, related patents, trademarks, and license agreements) of which you are personally aware". In a sense, similar to the suggestion Kevin originally made, except we're assuming some representative of the relevant US government agency is signing the CLA. This does create a possible asymmetry in patent licensing under certain scenarios, but I'm not sure how realistic they are. Of course section 7 suggests that any direct contributor to OpenStack who has signed the Indiidual or Corporate CLA could submit Kevin's contribution anyway. - Richard _______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

Ok, so.... I wrote the network topology sort patch October 3 in about 1 hour. It is now December 15. What do we need to do to get things resolved? Thanks, Kevin ________________________________________ From: Alice King [alice@alicelkingpc.com] Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2013 7:52 AM To: 'Richard Fontana'; 'Alice King' Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. I was also referring to the OpenStack US Govt. CLA - sorry for the confusion there. Yes, I agree that code created under these circumstances (federal government contractor) will not always be eligible for public domain treatment under the "de minimis" exception, but a federal government contractor could still release the work as public domain through some decision process. Whether or not the copyright is released as public domain does not directly bear on the patent issue, but to my mind it is a sort of rough way to guage how the contributing contractor views the work, and whether there is a patent lurking somewhere that they might assert later. In other words, is it way to test whether it is really just a logistics problem for them to clear the patent license given the left hand, right hand problem, or are they holding onto something they might want to assert later. I don't think contractors like Batelle face the same hurdles on approval to release copyright as public domain as they do for trying to clear a patent license. (I found some helpful information here on this: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/3076/Licensing_and_ Policy_Summit_Report_2007.pdf?sequence=1) But... Maybe including the public domain requirement is too complex and it doesn't line up all that well with the patent issue risk. Maybe instead the "rule" would be that the Foundation Executive Director would have discretion to determine for government funded research institutions whether the burden to the contributing institution of clearing a patent license was disproportionate to the risk to the community of a accepting the contribution, and in those cases authorize the use of a modified Corporate CLA that included the sentence from the ECL limiting the patent license to things created by the same author. This would require a case-by case analysis, but the JHUAPL situation indicates that a case-by-case analysis might be needed to make sure the "rule" was applied sensibly. There is no compelling reason to grant an exception to JHUAPL since they don't have the left hand/right hand problem that Batelle has. -----Original Message----- From: Richard Fontana [mailto:rfontana@redhat.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 4, 2013 10:49 PM To: Alice King Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. On Wed, Dec 04, 2013 at 03:55:39PM -0600, Alice King wrote:

Thanks Richard. So then Jonathan would make a decision that where both of two conditions were met, a modified version of the Federal Government Contractor CLA would be used. The two conditions would be (i) the work was created by a contractor under a federal government contract, and (ii) the copyright in the work is public domain.

I understand that the rule for federal contractors is that they do retain copyright absent some exception or special term in the agreement. In this case, Batelle would have to decide, and represent to the Foundation, that Kevin's work was public domain - presumably under the "de minimis" exception suggested by the Batelle lawyer.

If we take this approach, it seems to me that the US Government CLA would be the best CLA to non-materially revise since it already reflects that the copyright is public domain. The non-material revision could be the addition of the sentence that appears in the Educational Community License: "Any patent license granted hereby with respect to contributions by an individual employed by an institution or organization is limited to patent claims where the individual that is the author of the Work is also the inventor of the patent claims licensed, and where the organization or institution has the right to grant such license under applicable grant and research funding agreements. No other express or implied licenses are granted."

Is this consistent with what you are thinking might work?

Not entirely ... I don't believe that would work as a modification to the US Government CLA. Battelle suggested use of the ECL on the assumption that it would be the entity bound by the CLA, not the government. I was actually imagining an alteration of the US Government CLA https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/GovernmentCLA that explicitly noted that the contribution might consist of work done by federal contractors. It could, perhaps, then be limited to cases where the contractor's work is noncopyrightable/de minimis (as we are assuming is true of Kevin's current work) but this doesn't seem to be generally useful, since we have to assume the more typical case will be that the contractor's contribution is copyrightable. Actually, I just noticed that the existing US Government CLA omits the section 7 language that is in the other CLAs (see Kevin's initial posting in this thread). So perhaps the simplest thing to do is to restore that language to the US Government CLA, or modify it slightly to cover the case of work done by federal contractors. That requires "identifying the complete details of its source and of any license or other restriction (including, but not limited to, related patents, trademarks, and license agreements) of which you are personally aware". In a sense, similar to the suggestion Kevin originally made, except we're assuming some representative of the relevant US government agency is signing the CLA. This does create a possible asymmetry in patent licensing under certain scenarios, but I'm not sure how realistic they are. Of course section 7 suggests that any direct contributor to OpenStack who has signed the Indiidual or Corporate CLA could submit Kevin's contribution anyway. - Richard _______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss _______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

Hi Kevin On 12/16/2013 09:39 AM, Fox, Kevin M wrote:

I wrote the network topology sort patch October 3 in about 1 hour. It is now December 15. What do we need to do to get things resolved?

I'm really sorry this is taking so long to address, it's very unfortunate I agree. Currently the issue is being debated with the Executive Director and Foundation's legal counsel. I hope to have more news for you soon. /stef -- Ask and answer questions on https://ask.openstack.org

Ping. Any update on this? I know vacations probably cut into things but its also January 8th now, 3 months... Thanks, Kevin ________________________________________ From: Fox, Kevin M Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 12:47 PM To: Stefano Maffulli; Alice King; 'Richard Fontana' Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. Ok, thanks. Just wanted to make sure it wasn't forgotten. Kevin ________________________________________ From: Stefano Maffulli [stefano@openstack.org] Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 11:50 AM To: Fox, Kevin M; Alice King; 'Richard Fontana' Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. Hi Kevin On 12/16/2013 09:39 AM, Fox, Kevin M wrote:

I wrote the network topology sort patch October 3 in about 1 hour. It is now December 15. What do we need to do to get things resolved?

I'm really sorry this is taking so long to address, it's very unfortunate I agree. Currently the issue is being debated with the Executive Director and Foundation's legal counsel. I hope to have more news for you soon. /stef -- Ask and answer questions on https://ask.openstack.org _______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

Ok. Thanks for the rough time line, that really helps. Kevin ________________________________ From: Lisa Miller [lisa@lsmillerlaw.com] Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 1:21 PM To: Fox, Kevin M; Stefano Maffulli; Alice King; 'Richard Fontana' Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. Hi Kevin, We are still working on this for you. As Alice mentioned in her last email, we are working on whether this needs to go to the foundation's board of directors. The next board meeting is January 30, so I am hopeful that this can be resolved quickly thereafter. Thanks, Lisa Lisa S. Miller ________________________________ Law Office of Lisa S. Miller, PLLC Phone: (210) 296-6991 Fax: (210) 828-5330 6338 N. New Braunfels, #191, San Antonio, Texas 78209 ________________________________ The information contained in this e-mail message may be privileged, confidential and protected from disclosure, and no waiver of any attorney-client, work product or other privilege is intended. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited. If you think that you have received this e-mail message in error, please e-mail the sender and delete all copies. From: <Fox>, Kevin M <Kevin.Fox@pnnl.gov<mailto:Kevin.Fox@pnnl.gov>> Date: Wednesday, January 8, 2014 11:41 AM To: Stefano Maffulli <stefano@openstack.org<mailto:stefano@openstack.org>>, Alice King <alice@alicelkingpc.com<mailto:alice@alicelkingpc.com>>, 'Richard Fontana' <rfontana@redhat.com<mailto:rfontana@redhat.com>> Cc: "legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org>" <legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org>> Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. Ping. Any update on this? I know vacations probably cut into things but its also January 8th now, 3 months... Thanks, Kevin ________________________________________ From: Fox, Kevin M Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 12:47 PM To: Stefano Maffulli; Alice King; 'Richard Fontana' Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org> Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. Ok, thanks. Just wanted to make sure it wasn't forgotten. Kevin ________________________________________ From: Stefano Maffulli [stefano@openstack.org<mailto:stefano@openstack.org>] Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 11:50 AM To: Fox, Kevin M; Alice King; 'Richard Fontana' Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org> Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. Hi Kevin On 12/16/2013 09:39 AM, Fox, Kevin M wrote: I wrote the network topology sort patch October 3 in about 1 hour. It is now December 15. What do we need to do to get things resolved? I'm really sorry this is taking so long to address, it's very unfortunate I agree. Currently the issue is being debated with the Executive Director and Foundation's legal counsel. I hope to have more news for you soon. /stef -- Ask and answer questions on https://ask.openstack.org _______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss _______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

Hey Kevin, FWIW, and since I don't see a response to your question - I don't recall this being mentioned at last week's board meeting: http://blogs.gnome.org/markmc/2014/02/07/jan-30-openstack-foundation-board-m... Thanks, Mark. On Wed, 2014-02-05 at 18:27 +0000, Fox, Kevin M wrote:

Any news from the board meeting?

Thanks, Kevin ________________________________ From: Fox, Kevin M Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 1:48 PM To: Lisa Miller; Stefano Maffulli; Alice King; 'Richard Fontana' Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag.

Ok. Thanks for the rough time line, that really helps.

Kevin ________________________________ From: Lisa Miller [lisa@lsmillerlaw.com] Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 1:21 PM To: Fox, Kevin M; Stefano Maffulli; Alice King; 'Richard Fontana' Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag.

Hi Kevin,

We are still working on this for you. As Alice mentioned in her last email, we are working on whether this needs to go to the foundation's board of directors. The next board meeting is January 30, so I am hopeful that this can be resolved quickly thereafter.

Thanks, Lisa

Lisa S. Miller ________________________________ Law Office of Lisa S. Miller, PLLC Phone: (210) 296-6991 Fax: (210) 828-5330 6338 N. New Braunfels, #191, San Antonio, Texas 78209 ________________________________

The information contained in this e-mail message may be privileged, confidential and protected from disclosure, and no waiver of any attorney-client, work product or other privilege is intended. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited. If you think that you have received this e-mail message in error, please e-mail the sender and delete all copies.

From: <Fox>, Kevin M <Kevin.Fox@pnnl.gov<mailto:Kevin.Fox@pnnl.gov>> Date: Wednesday, January 8, 2014 11:41 AM To: Stefano Maffulli <stefano@openstack.org<mailto:stefano@openstack.org>>, Alice King <alice@alicelkingpc.com<mailto:alice@alicelkingpc.com>>, 'Richard Fontana' <rfontana@redhat.com<mailto:rfontana@redhat.com>> Cc: "legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org>" <legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org>> Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag.

Ping. Any update on this? I know vacations probably cut into things but its also January 8th now, 3 months...

Thanks, Kevin ________________________________________ From: Fox, Kevin M Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 12:47 PM To: Stefano Maffulli; Alice King; 'Richard Fontana' Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org> Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag.

Ok, thanks. Just wanted to make sure it wasn't forgotten.

Kevin ________________________________________ From: Stefano Maffulli [stefano@openstack.org<mailto:stefano@openstack.org>] Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 11:50 AM To: Fox, Kevin M; Alice King; 'Richard Fontana' Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org> Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag.

Hi Kevin

On 12/16/2013 09:39 AM, Fox, Kevin M wrote: I wrote the network topology sort patch October 3 in about 1 hour. It is now December 15. What do we need to do to get things resolved?

I'm really sorry this is taking so long to address, it's very unfortunate I agree. Currently the issue is being debated with the Executive Director and Foundation's legal counsel. I hope to have more news for you soon.

/stef

-- Ask and answer questions on https://ask.openstack.org

_______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

_______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

_______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

Hi Kevin, I sympathise and I'm very sorry for the pain. I don't have any great insights into your case and I know the foundation and Legal Affairs Committee are trying to resolve it. It does nothing to help in the short term but, ultimately, I hope we can do away with the CLA. There's a lot of work we need to do before we can even have a fully considered discussion on the topic though: http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/legal-discuss/2014-January/000163.html Mark. On Fri, 2014-02-07 at 17:37 +0000, Fox, Kevin M wrote:

Hi Mark,

Well, I'm.... disappointed, to say the least.

I'm growing weary of trying to do the right thing here. Its been over 4 months now. I've been postponing writing more patches and unless someone can convince me soon that there is any hope of resolving this, I will just give up on writing any more code and stop trying to contribute what I have written. What a shame.

The OpenStack project has really been hamstrung by fear of patents. Even on things that are very obviously not patentable.

Anyway, not trying to shoot the messenger. Thanks for letting me know.

Thanks, Kevin ________________________________________ From: Mark McLoughlin [markmc@redhat.com] Sent: Friday, February 07, 2014 8:48 AM To: Fox, Kevin M Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag.

Hey Kevin,

FWIW, and since I don't see a response to your question - I don't recall this being mentioned at last week's board meeting:

http://blogs.gnome.org/markmc/2014/02/07/jan-30-openstack-foundation-board-m...

Thanks, Mark.

On Wed, 2014-02-05 at 18:27 +0000, Fox, Kevin M wrote:

...

Any news from the board meeting?

Thanks, Kevin ________________________________ From: Fox, Kevin M Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 1:48 PM To: Lisa Miller; Stefano Maffulli; Alice King; 'Richard Fontana' Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag.

Ok. Thanks for the rough time line, that really helps.

Kevin ________________________________ From: Lisa Miller [lisa@lsmillerlaw.com] Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 1:21 PM To: Fox, Kevin M; Stefano Maffulli; Alice King; 'Richard Fontana' Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag.

Hi Kevin,

We are still working on this for you. As Alice mentioned in her last email, we are working on whether this needs to go to the foundation's board of directors. The next board meeting is January 30, so I am hopeful that this can be resolved quickly thereafter.

Thanks, Lisa

Lisa S. Miller ________________________________ Law Office of Lisa S. Miller, PLLC Phone: (210) 296-6991 Fax: (210) 828-5330 6338 N. New Braunfels, #191, San Antonio, Texas 78209 ________________________________

The information contained in this e-mail message may be privileged, confidential and protected from disclosure, and no waiver of any attorney-client, work product or other privilege is intended. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited. If you think that you have received this e-mail message in error, please e-mail the sender and delete all copies.

From: <Fox>, Kevin M <Kevin.Fox@pnnl.gov<mailto:Kevin.Fox@pnnl.gov>> Date: Wednesday, January 8, 2014 11:41 AM To: Stefano Maffulli <stefano@openstack.org<mailto:stefano@openstack.org>>, Alice King <alice@alicelkingpc.com<mailto:alice@alicelkingpc.com>>, 'Richard Fontana' <rfontana@redhat.com<mailto:rfontana@redhat.com>> Cc: "legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org>" <legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org>> Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag.

Ping. Any update on this? I know vacations probably cut into things but its also January 8th now, 3 months...

Thanks, Kevin ________________________________________ From: Fox, Kevin M Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 12:47 PM To: Stefano Maffulli; Alice King; 'Richard Fontana' Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org> Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag.

Ok, thanks. Just wanted to make sure it wasn't forgotten.

Kevin ________________________________________ From: Stefano Maffulli [stefano@openstack.org<mailto:stefano@openstack.org>] Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 11:50 AM To: Fox, Kevin M; Alice King; 'Richard Fontana' Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org> Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag.

Hi Kevin

On 12/16/2013 09:39 AM, Fox, Kevin M wrote: I wrote the network topology sort patch October 3 in about 1 hour. It is now December 15. What do we need to do to get things resolved?

I'm really sorry this is taking so long to address, it's very unfortunate I agree. Currently the issue is being debated with the Executive Director and Foundation's legal counsel. I hope to have more news for you soon.

/stef

-- Ask and answer questions on https://ask.openstack.org

_______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

_______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

_______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

Thanks for the update. I'm glad it was at least discussed. Since not all hope is lost, I'll try and be patient longer. Thanks, Kevin ________________________________________ From: Stefano Maffulli [stefano@openstack.org] Sent: Monday, February 10, 2014 8:14 AM To: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. On 02/07/2014 06:37 PM, Fox, Kevin M wrote:

Well, I'm.... disappointed, to say the least.

It's disappointing. The current status of the situation is that the legal affair committee advised against modifying the US Gov CLA as Alice suggested in December. Days ago the Foundation's counsel has approached PNNL's lawyers again. I'll keep you posted. /stef -- Ask and answer questions on https://ask.openstack.org _______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

I completely agree that the nature of what you specifically want to contribute here shows how ridiculous this all is, which is why I asked if you saw this as a one-time thing once I saw what your contribution actually was. Your comparison to the Linux kernel is right on point. Also I believe that many projects using CLAs similar to those in use by OpenStack, such as Apache Software Foundation projects, would not require CLA signature in your situation. I just want to make clear I am not defending the current situation - I am a strong critic of it. I myself had to sign an OpenStack CLA (and wait many hours for it to be approved - I think things have improved processwise since those days) just to fix a typo in the openstack.org wiki . I think we are seeing here some of the problems of having baked the CLA requirement into the OpenStack Foundation bylaws IP policy, which Red Hat attempted to raise concerns about. Anyway, I do think the other idea of modifying the US Government CLA - if there is a way for you to get someone to sign that - could be a way forward. It's not ideal. - Richard On Wed, Dec 04, 2013 at 02:06:33PM -0800, Fox, Kevin M wrote:

Let me try and explain it a little bit more.

The problem, as I understand it, is the following:

Basically, I think we have an organization that isn't a true legal organization.

* PNNL is a National Lab, paid for by DOE and operated by Battelle for DOE. * In reality, employees at the lab seem more closely tied to PNNL then they are to Battelle. Battelle is almost a separate organization. * Legally though, there is no distinction between PNNL employees and Battelle employees. * We code stuff on behalf of DOE as independent contractors and the code is DOE's. * DOE can give the code back to us in mostly our choice of license, within reason. * PNNL employees don't have enough authority to grant patent licenses Battelle wide.

Basically, we are the right hand, and we can't grantee the left hand won't ever be bad. We don't seem to be able to get our Head to care enough about the code since it is really trivial/uninteresting to them. And DOE own's the code anyway.

And the silly thing about the whole thing is we are talking about a sort comparator function, tweaks to existing templates to make them work in heat rather then cfn, and tweaks to heat templates to start elasticsearch instead of mongodb. Nothing that should be patent-able in the first place. Prior art all over the place.

Everyone is trying very hard not to take any risks at all for something that is extremely unlikely to be risky. If the Linux kernel operated this way, there wouldn't be a Linux kernel. I really do understand everyone's position. I'm just trying to figure a way out of it. And starting to get really frustrated by the situation. It took literally tens of minutes to write some of the code in question. Months to attempt to get it past legal hurdles.

Does that help explain the situation?

Thanks, Kevin

________________________________________ From: Richard Fontana [rfontana@redhat.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2013 1:35 PM To: Alice King Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag.

On Wed, Dec 04, 2013 at 03:56:05PM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:

...

Given the obstacles contained in the OpenStack Foundation bylaws IP policy to flexibility in handling inbound contributions, I think the easiest solution (though not the most desirable one) would be for the Executive Director to make "non material amendments" to the Individual (and/or Corporate) CLA so that a federal government contractor not holding copyright on what is being contributed can use such a CLA.

Or perhaps the Executive Director could non-materially revise the US Government CLA to have it cover the case of contributions coming in from contractors? I realize that might seem to contradict the essence of my previous response, but the problem I see here is balancing reduction of contributor red tape against the need for a fair IPR licensing policy.

- RF

_______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

Let me try and explain it a little bit more.

The problem, as I understand it, is the following:

Basically, I think we have an organization that isn't a true legal organization.

* PNNL is a National Lab, paid for by DOE and operated by Battelle for DOE. * In reality, employees at the lab seem more closely tied to PNNL then

* Legally though, there is no distinction between PNNL employees and Battelle employees. * We code stuff on behalf of DOE as independent contractors and the code is DOE's. * DOE can give the code back to us in mostly our choice of license, within reason. * PNNL employees don't have enough authority to grant patent licenses Battelle wide.

Basically, we are the right hand, and we can't grantee the left hand won't ever be bad. We don't seem to be able to get our Head to care enough about

The value of the CLA to my mind is that it creates a single rights holder for the community. This could be key if there are material patent threats, and it would be a lynchpin of a some of the patent cooperation strategies that have been discussed. Comments on this? Is there an objection to the CLA other than the process delay and aggravation factor? I think we are to use CC-BY for documentation, so agree that the CLA is not necessary for a change to a comma on the wiki! Kevin - I sense that we may have a resolution on this along the lines below. I will forward this to Jonathan Bryce since he will have to authorize the deviation, and the Batelle attorney to see if he has any objection to this. -----Original Message----- From: Richard Fontana [mailto:rfontana@redhat.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 4, 2013 4:39 PM To: Fox, Kevin M Cc: Alice King; legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. I completely agree that the nature of what you specifically want to contribute here shows how ridiculous this all is, which is why I asked if you saw this as a one-time thing once I saw what your contribution actually was. Your comparison to the Linux kernel is right on point. Also I believe that many projects using CLAs similar to those in use by OpenStack, such as Apache Software Foundation projects, would not require CLA signature in your situation. I just want to make clear I am not defending the current situation - I am a strong critic of it. I myself had to sign an OpenStack CLA (and wait many hours for it to be approved - I think things have improved processwise since those days) just to fix a typo in the openstack.org wiki . I think we are seeing here some of the problems of having baked the CLA requirement into the OpenStack Foundation bylaws IP policy, which Red Hat attempted to raise concerns about. Anyway, I do think the other idea of modifying the US Government CLA - if there is a way for you to get someone to sign that - could be a way forward. It's not ideal. - Richard On Wed, Dec 04, 2013 at 02:06:33PM -0800, Fox, Kevin M wrote: they are to Battelle. Battelle is almost a separate organization. the code since it is really trivial/uninteresting to them. And DOE own's the code anyway.

And the silly thing about the whole thing is we are talking about a sort

comparator function, tweaks to existing templates to make them work in heat rather then cfn, and tweaks to heat templates to start elasticsearch instead of mongodb. Nothing that should be patent-able in the first place. Prior art all over the place.

Everyone is trying very hard not to take any risks at all for something

that is extremely unlikely to be risky. If the Linux kernel operated this way, there wouldn't be a Linux kernel. I really do understand everyone's position. I'm just trying to figure a way out of it. And starting to get really frustrated by the situation. It took literally tens of minutes to write some of the code in question. Months to attempt to get it past legal hurdles.

Does that help explain the situation?

Thanks, Kevin

________________________________________ From: Richard Fontana [rfontana@redhat.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2013 1:35 PM To: Alice King Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag.

On Wed, Dec 04, 2013 at 03:56:05PM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:

...

Given the obstacles contained in the OpenStack Foundation bylaws IP policy to flexibility in handling inbound contributions, I think the easiest solution (though not the most desirable one) would be for the Executive Director to make "non material amendments" to the Individual (and/or Corporate) CLA so that a federal government contractor not holding copyright on what is being contributed can use such a CLA.

Or perhaps the Executive Director could non-materially revise the US Government CLA to have it cover the case of contributions coming in from contractors? I realize that might seem to contradict the essence of my previous response, but the problem I see here is balancing reduction of contributor red tape against the need for a fair IPR licensing policy.

- RF

_______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

_______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

Let me try and explain it a little bit more.

The problem, as I understand it, is the following:

Basically, I think we have an organization that isn't a true legal organization.

* PNNL is a National Lab, paid for by DOE and operated by Battelle for DOE. * In reality, employees at the lab seem more closely tied to PNNL then

* Legally though, there is no distinction between PNNL employees and Battelle employees. * We code stuff on behalf of DOE as independent contractors and the code is DOE's. * DOE can give the code back to us in mostly our choice of license, within reason. * PNNL employees don't have enough authority to grant patent licenses Battelle wide.

Basically, we are the right hand, and we can't grantee the left hand won't ever be bad. We don't seem to be able to get our Head to care enough about

I am definitely not trying to minimize the bureaucracy overhead issue, I just want to understand where the concerns lie. Thanks Kevin. Alice -----Original Message----- From: Fox, Kevin M [mailto:kevin.fox@pnnl.gov] Sent: Wednesday, December 4, 2013 5:41 PM To: Alice King; 'Richard Fontana' Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. My 2 cents. CLA's have their downsides too. Bureaucracy overhead is one that we're bumping into. Another big one that usually turns me off from contributing is the trust worthiness of the organization requiring the CLA over longish periods of time. I am willing to do a CLA with OpenStack since it seems very unlikely that it will be a problem with the way its structured, but CLA's have been detrimental for lots of projects that suddenly found themselves bought out. For example, MySql, OpenOffice, and Lustre spring to mind... Its good to try and protect the project from patents. It also needs to be balanced with restricting contributions and contributors too much. Yeah, I think we're close here. Thanks, Kevin ________________________________________ From: Alice King [alice_king@att.net] Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2013 3:19 PM To: 'Richard Fontana'; Fox, Kevin M Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: RE: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. The value of the CLA to my mind is that it creates a single rights holder for the community. This could be key if there are material patent threats, and it would be a lynchpin of a some of the patent cooperation strategies that have been discussed. Comments on this? Is there an objection to the CLA other than the process delay and aggravation factor? I think we are to use CC-BY for documentation, so agree that the CLA is not necessary for a change to a comma on the wiki! Kevin - I sense that we may have a resolution on this along the lines below. I will forward this to Jonathan Bryce since he will have to authorize the deviation, and the Batelle attorney to see if he has any objection to this. -----Original Message----- From: Richard Fontana [mailto:rfontana@redhat.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 4, 2013 4:39 PM To: Fox, Kevin M Cc: Alice King; legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag. I completely agree that the nature of what you specifically want to contribute here shows how ridiculous this all is, which is why I asked if you saw this as a one-time thing once I saw what your contribution actually was. Your comparison to the Linux kernel is right on point. Also I believe that many projects using CLAs similar to those in use by OpenStack, such as Apache Software Foundation projects, would not require CLA signature in your situation. I just want to make clear I am not defending the current situation - I am a strong critic of it. I myself had to sign an OpenStack CLA (and wait many hours for it to be approved - I think things have improved processwise since those days) just to fix a typo in the openstack.org wiki . I think we are seeing here some of the problems of having baked the CLA requirement into the OpenStack Foundation bylaws IP policy, which Red Hat attempted to raise concerns about. Anyway, I do think the other idea of modifying the US Government CLA - if there is a way for you to get someone to sign that - could be a way forward. It's not ideal. - Richard On Wed, Dec 04, 2013 at 02:06:33PM -0800, Fox, Kevin M wrote: they are to Battelle. Battelle is almost a separate organization. the code since it is really trivial/uninteresting to them. And DOE own's the code anyway.

And the silly thing about the whole thing is we are talking about a sort

comparator function, tweaks to existing templates to make them work in heat rather then cfn, and tweaks to heat templates to start elasticsearch instead of mongodb. Nothing that should be patent-able in the first place. Prior art all over the place.

Everyone is trying very hard not to take any risks at all for something

that is extremely unlikely to be risky. If the Linux kernel operated this way, there wouldn't be a Linux kernel. I really do understand everyone's position. I'm just trying to figure a way out of it. And starting to get really frustrated by the situation. It took literally tens of minutes to write some of the code in question. Months to attempt to get it past legal hurdles.

Does that help explain the situation?

Thanks, Kevin

________________________________________ From: Richard Fontana [rfontana@redhat.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2013 1:35 PM To: Alice King Cc: legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Contribution snag.

On Wed, Dec 04, 2013 at 03:56:05PM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:

...

Given the obstacles contained in the OpenStack Foundation bylaws IP policy to flexibility in handling inbound contributions, I think the easiest solution (though not the most desirable one) would be for the Executive Director to make "non material amendments" to the Individual (and/or Corporate) CLA so that a federal government contractor not holding copyright on what is being contributed can use such a CLA.

Or perhaps the Executive Director could non-materially revise the US Government CLA to have it cover the case of contributions coming in from contractors? I realize that might seem to contradict the essence of my previous response, but the problem I see here is balancing reduction of contributor red tape against the need for a fair IPR licensing policy.

- RF

_______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss

_______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss _______________________________________________ legal-discuss mailing list legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss