Open Stack

Julie:

You may not have seen my later post, but I think that deals with your concern:

I have never been consulted on this issue, but this interpretation of the bylaws is incorrect. ATC is defined to require someone to be an Individual Member, but ATC is concerned with voting for the Technical Committee, it does not restrict contributions.  Anyone, member or non-member, can submit a contribution if they have signed the relevant CLA.

-----Original Message-----
From: Julie Pichon [mailto:jpichon at redhat.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2014 3:53 AM
To: Mark McLoughlin; Richard Fontana
Cc: legal-discuss at lists.openstack.org
Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Trivial contributions and CLAs

On 22/04/14 23:10, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> On Tue, 2014-04-22 at 14:41 -0400, Richard Fontana wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 06:24:10PM +0200, Thierry Carrez wrote:
>>> 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.
>>
>> I read it the second way, FWIW.
>>
>> I also believe that requiring all contributors (even a one-time
>> contributor of a 'drive-by patch') to be Individual Members would
>> have been seen as a significant aspect of Foundation membership
>> policy at the time the Foundation was formed, yet I can recall no
>> discussion on the issue. I am not saying that it is something that
>> ought to be stated in the OpenStack Foundation bylaws necessarily,
>> but I am saying that when the bylaws were initially drafted, if it
>> was really contemplated that all contributors would be required to
>> become Individual Members as a *prerequisite* to making an initial
>> contribution (however trivial), it would probably have been made
>> explicit in the bylaws much like the CLA requirement is stated in the
>> IP policy. In other words I do not believe a policy of "you must join
>> the Foundation if you want to submit a patch" was contemplated when
>> the Foundation was formed. If anyone else here thinks I'm wrong about
>> that, or has a different recollection about this issue, I'd be happy
>> to hear it.
>>
>> Reinforcing that point, if it is correct to read the bylaws as saying
>> that all contributors must join the Foundation, why wouldn't the CLAs
>> be unified with the membership agreements?
>>
>> 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 think Apache requires project leads to
>> become members by its notion of membership; that's the closest
>> analogue I've been able to find. It just strikes me intuitively as
>> *wrong* -- isn't it in effect coercing potential new contributors
>> into joining an organization they might not necessarily wish to join,
>> or might not wish to join until later on?
>
> All very well stated and I agree this is rather bizarre.
>
> I did know about this before and, interestingly, it was Julie (the
> Horizon maintainer on bug #1308984[1]) who pointed out how odd this
> situation is. Perhaps the Horizon project is seeing more instances of
> this being an issue, or perhaps it came up in the context of the OPW.

Hey Mark,

I often help people get started contributing to open-source and explaining "and now you need to join the Foundation" is more difficult to explain than even the CLA, as joining a Foundation indicates a longer term commitment and belief in the project (in my mind and based on experience in other projects). It seemed like adding another barrier to making a contribution.

When a volunteer contributor is submitting their first patch to test the waters and get a feel for the community, it seems like asking for a lot especially when they don't know yet if they'll be sticking around. (To the more pragmatic folks it just seems like unnecessary bureaucracy.)

> In any case, the way I see it is that a casual contributor should be
> able to submit small patches with minimal friction and, later if ever,
> decide they want to be more actively involved, research what the
> OpenStack Foundation is all about and then join it with a view to
> being an active member.

That's the order in which "joining a Foundation" would make more sense to me, too.

Julie

>
> One of the elements of disquiet I've heard about our CLA is that
> contributors must enter into an asymmetric agreement with an entity
> they have not yet learned to trust ... when they merely want to
> license their work to the world under the trusted Apache License. This
> membership requirement takes this a step further by making
> contributors not only trust the Foundation but also to join it.
>
> Mark.
>
> [1] - https://bugs.launchpad.net/horizon/+bug/1308984
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> legal-discuss mailing list
> legal-discuss at lists.openstack.org<mailto:legal-discuss at lists.openstack.org>
> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss
>


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

Please consider the environment before printing this email.

The information contained in this email may be confidential and/or legally privileged. It has been sent for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). If the reader of this message is not an intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication, or any of its contents, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please reply to the sender and destroy all copies of the message. To contact us directly, send to postmaster at dlapiper.com. Thank you.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/legal-discuss/attachments/20140423/126f1dc5/attachment.html>