[fusion-dev] contributors agreements ??

[Jason Fournier]

Hey All,

In an effort to get some legs under contributor agreements I'm wondering if
it would help if I started to draft something and send it around for review?
Upon general consensus of the approach it would go to an RFC for acceptance.
I think the following steps would achieve this goal:

1) Review this thread for comments.
2) Draft a pseudo agreement (i.e., the mechanism, top-level sections, etc.)
3) Submit to fusion-dev for comments
4) If there are no major objections to the approach then draft an RFC 
4i) If there are major objections then review comment 3 and begin the
process again
5) Vote on RFC

Thoughts?

Jay




-----Original Message-----
From: fusion-dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:fusion-dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Julien-Samuel
Lacroix
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 4:19 PM
To: fusion-dev at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [fusion-dev] contributors agreements ??

As long as the new contributor email the list that he have read and 
understood the contributor agreement it's fine for me...as long as we 
have a contributor agreement. I think the major headache we had (still 
have?) with MapServer incubation was to track down everyone and ask to 
give the ownership of the code.
I may have missed it, but the current MapServer committer guidelines 
(RFC7) doesn't specify who own the code. GDAL Commiter Guildlines 
address this with the Legal section I think. We should think of adding it.

OpenLayers:
http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/HowToContribute
MapServer:
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/development/rfc/ms-rfc-7
GDAL:
http://www.gdal.org/rfc3_commiters.html

my 0.02$

Julien


Paul Spencer wrote:
> Given that one of our goals is eventual incubation into OSGeo, I would  
> like to be well prepared for the incubation process.  The most  
> difficult part of that process for existing projects seems to be the  
> code provenance review (where did all the code come from and do you  
> clearly have the right to include it in your project).
> 
> At this point in time, all the code in Fusion is copyright either DM  
> Solutions Group or MapGears (thanks Alan!).  As we are starting to get  
> more traffic on the lists, it is conceivable that we will start  getting 
> bug fixes, patches, and new features contributed from outside  DM 
> Solutions Group.  I would like to encourage this as much as  possible, 
> while maintaining clear entitlement to use the code that is  contributed.
> 
> There are two models in use right now in the projects that I am  
> involved in.
> 
> One is to require a signed contributors agreement for anyone that  
> submits code (committer or not).  Patches, features etc coming from  
> anyone who has not signed a contributors agreement are not included.   
> OpenLayers uses this model.
> 
> The other is to have a committers agreement, whereby committers take  
> responsibility for the code they are committing to the repository.   
> They can accept user contributions and commit them if they feel the  
> contribution is sound.  MapServer uses this model.
> 
> On the other axis is whether or not to require a signed agreement  
> (OpenLayers) or just an acknowledgement of the agreement (MapServer).
> 
> I'm open on both issues, I would like to get feedback from the (now  
> growing) community of developers.  But I would like to put something  in 
> place before we start getting a lot of contributions so we can  prevent 
> some of the leg work required for incubation.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Paul
> 
> __________________________________________
> 
>    Paul Spencer
>    Chief Technology Officer
>    DM Solutions Group Inc
>    http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> fusion-dev mailing list
> fusion-dev at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/fusion-dev
> 

-- 
Julien-Samuel Lacroix
Mapgears
http://www.mapgears.com/
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