Open Stack

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Anne Gentle" <annegentle at gmail.com>
> To: openstack-docs at lists.openstack.org
> 
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2015 08:36:07 +0100
> > From: Andreas Jaeger <aj at suse.com>
> > To: Stefano Maffulli <stefano at openstack.org>,
> >         openstack-docs at lists.openstack.org
> > Subject: Re: [OpenStack-docs] Licensing of documentation
> > Message-ID: <55092AE7.6040207 at suse.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
> >
> > On 03/17/2015 07:12 PM, Stefano Maffulli wrote:
> > > The conversation has definitely drifted off-topic now :) but I think
> > > it's worth responding here (and eventually move to infra, where it
> > > should continue)
> > >
> > > On Tue, 2015-03-17 at 15:57 +0000, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
> > >> Once we can safely migrate review.openstack.org to
> > >> authenticate against the same openstackid.org identity provider as
> > >> www.openstack.org uses, this should become much simpler again since
> > >> we'll have a way to force contributors to sign up for a foundation
> > >> account (though they'll no longer need to fill out the foundation
> > >> membership form when doing so).
> > >
> > > Indeed, stop using Launchpad and use openstackid.org globally is the
> > > last step we need to accomplish before we can decouple individual
> > > memberships from commit rights. I think we already have all the basic
> > > tools in place to build the list of voters, we need to start thinking
> > > about moving gerrit to use openstackid.org.
> > >
> > > Now, to go back to licensing docs:
> > >
> > > what's the status of licensing for the OpenStack upstream documentation?
> > >
> > > (I can wait for Anne to come back from holiday if she's the only one who
> > > can answer this question).
> >
> > **************************
> >
> 
> Sigh, that's not good. I don't want to be the only one who knows this. :)
> 
> Technically the docs are still Apache 2.0 because there is no indicator to
> a docs contributor that it would be licensed any other way. (To me, this is
> why we either change the current design or get the transfer underway.)

What indicator does a contributor get that their contributions are licensed under Apache 2.0 today? Are we just talking about the marks on the rendered output (that is, after they already contributed)?

> Nick Chase did a lot of legwork a few years back looking into what the
> legal need is to get all docs licensed cc-by, and we think we need to have
> all current contributors indicate in writing (somehow) that they license
> the content cc-by. Then the CLA needs to either change or we need a 2nd CLA
> for docs contributions.

Are we saying here that current contributors to the project have not signed the CLA? I know this is potentially the case for authors who contributed to books written in sprints using external tools (Ops Guide, Design Arch Guide) but ultimately to get into e.g. openstack-manuals someone who has signed the CLA has to contribute the patch(es) and in doing so grants copyright to the "Project Manager" no? Maybe I am missing something but I don't understand why we would need a second CLA here as the existing one doesn't specify a license either, yet isn't it the mechanism we're using to distribute using Apache 2.0 today?
 
> The desired outcomes are:
> - every reader knows the license
> - all people (corporate contributors, publishers) know if and how to reuse
> the docs

To be honest from previous discussions (which I believe kicked off Nick's expedition) I thought we had this nailed but now I'm more confused than when we started as it seems like we remain in complete limbo on this. Currently we have:

- Some books reporting ASL 2.0: E.g. http://docs.openstack.org/high-availability-guide/content/
- Some books reporting CC-BY-SA: E.g. http://docs.openstack.org/openstack-ops/content/
- Some books reporting BOTH: E.g. http://docs.openstack.org/admin-guide-cloud/content/

...and I have no idea which ones are correct. The earlier replies seemed to indicate we should be displaying both, but more recent ones seem to indicate we should be only displaying ASL 2.0. So in both my roles, as a downstream and as a contributor I can now count myself as thoroughly confused.

-Steve

> - every contributor knows their rights when they write upstream docs
> - contributors are not held liable if the docs are wrong
> - use of the OpenStack brand and logo still go through normal brand
> guidelines
> 
> That's all I can think of for now. Let me know if there are additional
> questions or difference in opinion on the outcomes we need.
> 
> Anne
> 
> _______________________________________________
> OpenStack-docs mailing list
> OpenStack-docs at lists.openstack.org
> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-docs
> 

-- 
Steve Gordon, RHCE
Sr. Technical Product Manager,
Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform