Open Stack

James E. Blair wrote:
> Mark McLoughlin <markmc at redhat.com> writes:
>> [...]
>>   https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/OpenStackAndItsCLA
> [...]
> An excellent piece, thank you so much.

+1

> In my experience at FOSDEM and at PyCon, I noted serious skepticism from
> people I spoke with about the "legitimacy" of OpenStack as an actual
> Open Source project.  In essence, there is a perception that it is a
> corporate project and contributions from individual or unaffiliated
> developers are not welcome.  I think we strive very hard to make sure
> that everyone is welcome, but the bureaucracy of the individual
> membership requirement and the CLA in particular are actions that say
> otherwise to many developers.  If I were not so employed, I would count
> myself among them.
> 
> The CLA is an "image problem" for our project, and in addition to all of
> the intangibles associated with that, it may adversely impact the
> recruiting of new developers.
> 
> I do think that this aspect is important; I leave it to you to consider
> whether you would like to add it to the document.  And once again, a
> thousand thanks for writing that.

As someone who visits grassroots free software conferences in Europe, I
confirm this. From an external volunteer perspective we come with a
"complex infrastructure/corporate software" tag, and that tag quickly
turns into "corporate open source project not interested in individual
contributors" as soon as those volunteers reach the CLA hurdle.

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)