Open Stack

Alan,

You¹d indicated there was a reason the CLA was structured to privilege the
Foundation and suggested that Mark elaborateŠ but I¹m not familiar w/ the
background or reasoning - could you expand upon that in advance of Mark
amending his treatise?

Thanks!

Rob Esker
NetApp, Inc.

On 5/21/14, 5:55 PM, "Alan Clark" <aclark at suse.com> wrote:

>Mark,
>
>The "OpenStack and its Contributor License Agreement" paper that you
>authored shows a lot of thought, time and effort.  I can appreciate the
>amount of effort you and others have put into investigating this issue.
>
>I recognize the need for the paper to be written as a persuasive argument
>to propose change but there is more that needs to be written for
>completeness if this is intended as a proposal to the Board. I will leave
>it to you to determine if that material belongs in this paper or
>somewhere in addition.  I simply know that If we don't write it up, the
>questions and issues will still come up at the meeting and we will simply
>chew more time and encounter decision delay. Also to give a little
>timeline, before putting this on a board meeting agenda I want all the
>info possible input into a Board packet to be distributed to the
>Directors 1 week prior to a meeting. I also think that it is important
>that the information be run through the Legal Affairs Committee for their
>consideration prior to a Board discussion.
>
>Here's some of the info that may need to be added:
>
>1. What is the real world feasibility / effort required to transition
>from the CLA to a DCO?  I'm familiar with the Linux kernel model, the
>how, why and impetus for implementing the DCO. Any estimates on the size
>of effort this would entail? For example, does our current repositories
>have the data needed to give us a clear chain of trust? How would a
>transition be handled?  What effort would be needed to setup the
>attestation? (include CI, documentation, education, adoption) My sense is
>that a DCO system is simpler to maintain (as you argue in the paper), but
>we do need to understand the effort that would be needed to get there
>with some confidence that OpenStack could actually do it and at what cost
>- people, time, impact to release, etc.
>
>2. In the section, "Relationship to the Apache License" the paper makes
>the statement, "...structured to privilege one entity (the OpenStack
>Foundation itself)...".  The paper makes it sound like the Foundation is
>an evil empire.  (Teasing&Smiling).   There is a reason the CLA was setup
>that way and that reasoning needs to be spelled out. (Doesn't mean that
>it can't change, just makes for a better informed decision.)
>
>3. In "The Need For Change" section, the paper describes the "Contributor
>Friction". I get the need to make the persuasive argument, but the impact
>also needs to be explained.   There is also a need for a similar section
>to cover the 'Corporate member / Sponsor Friction'. We have multiple
>member classes.  The proposal should cover all of them, making the
>persuasive argument as well as describing the impact. The Corporate
>member section should not only describe the impact to them as a corporate
>entity, but also the impact to the Foundation in terms of corporate
>members and sponsors.
>
>Next I have an ask and I am not implying that it is happening.  I just
>want you to be sensitive to it, so that it does not inadvertently happen.
>My ask is that you be the guard against any alienation between any of the
>governing bodies, advisory boards and members.  It's important to
>understand that each will look at this issue from differing
>responsibilities and perspectives, sometimes those perspectives can get
>minimalized. If we keep the groups focused on providing insight in
>relation to their areas of responsibility and ensure they respect others
>responsibilities, we'll arrive to the correct conclusion together and the
>community will be stronger from it.
>
>Thanks,
>AlanClark
>
>>>> On 5/13/2014 at 03:28 PM, Mark McLoughlin <markmc at redhat.com> wrote:
>> Hey
>> 
>> Along the lines of what I laid out in below email from January, Richard
>> and I completed a first draft of such a document last Friday:
>> 
>>   https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/OpenStackAndItsCLA
>> 
>> It's a 5000 word document that attempts to capture as much of the
>> nuances of this as we could.
>> 
>> No doubt there are many conflicting opinions about this and much
>> discussion is needed ... just as we anticipated in the below email.
>> 
>> Please do feel free to react here to any of the points made in the wiki
>> page. Any and all feedback is welcome.
>> 
>> We also had a design summit session today where we gathered some
>> feedback from the technical community, particularly about where we're
>> seeing the CLA cause contributor friction or an image problem for the
>> project. See here:
>> 
>>   https://etherpad.openstack.org/openstack-and-its-cla
>> 
>> My interpretation of the session is that there's a good level of
>> consensus amongst the technical project leadership that there are issues
>> and a change to the DCO should be seriously considered.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Mark. 
>> 
>> On Thu, 2014-01-23 at 10:55 +0000, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
>> 
>>> 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.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> legal-discuss mailing list
>> 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
>http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss