Open Stack

Richard Fontana wrote:
> [...]
> As you and a few other subscribers to this list know I have recently
> expressed some puzzlement and concern about the apparent requirement
> (which I had not previously known about) that one must be (or be
> employed by) an OpenStack Foundation member as a prerequisite for
> submitting a patch to an OpenStack project.
> 
> I think the OpenStack Foundation *can* impose this requirement, but I
> don't understand why this is seen as desirable. We now have two known
> cases where it has caused problems.
> 
> For that reason I don't believe the specific issue noted there is a
> legal issue as such, but a development process and
> Foundation-membership-promotion policy issue. (It probably should be
> discussed by people involved with the OpenStack Foundation and the
> OpenStack developer community somewhere.)

Maybe I can shine some light in that grey area.

The origin of this requirement is the definition of 'ATC' (active
technical contributor). Pre-foundation it was simply equivalent to code
contributor. You contribute, you are an active technical contributor,
and therefore you're allowed to vote in PTL and PPB/TC elections.

Unfortunately, the Foundation bylaws state (in Appendix 4) that ATCs
must be individual members of the Foundation. There are two ways to read
that -- all contributors must be individual members, or "ATCs" are the
subset of contributors that happen to also be individual members.

Since it was quite difficult to map contributors to individual members
and ensure that only the subset of contributors that are individual
members are considered ATCs, it was simpler to just consider the
original sense of "ATC" (active contributor) and consider that the
bylaws state the all contributors must be individual members of the
Foundation.

Not saying it wouldn't make sense to fix that, just explaining where it
comes from.

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)