1 |
>>>>> On Wed, 30 May 2018, Ulrich Mueller wrote: |
2 |
|
3 |
> A while back I requested information on past copyright assignments |
4 |
> [1]. Since then, we have located some 30 of the assignment forms, |
5 |
> signed by developers (most of them retired by now) in 2004. |
6 |
|
7 |
> Here is the second part of the exercise. The current draft of the |
8 |
> new Gentoo copyright policy [2] arranges for two procedures: |
9 |
|
10 |
> 1. Certifying agreement to a "Gentoo Developer's Certificate of |
11 |
> Origin" by including a "Signed-off-by" line with every commit. |
12 |
> This would be virtually identical to the procedure used for the |
13 |
> Linux kernel, and would be mandatory. A draft of the Gentoo DCO |
14 |
> can be seen at [3]. |
15 |
|
16 |
> 2. In addition, according to the current policy draft, developers |
17 |
> would be encouraged to sign a "Gentoo Contributor License |
18 |
> Agreement (CLA)". Its current draft version is at [4]. However, |
19 |
> this would be completely voluntary and *not* be required. The |
20 |
> exact workflow hasn't been drafted yet, but PGP signing of the |
21 |
> form would be one possibility. (Also note that the form includes |
22 |
> fields for real name and postal address.) |
23 |
|
24 |
> The goals of the second item is to "make compliance with this policy |
25 |
> easier (fewer copyright holders to list), and allow the Foundation |
26 |
> to enforce copyrights and re-license content if appropriate" [2]. |
27 |
> Apparently, we will only be able to achieve these goals if a |
28 |
> significant fraction of contributors will sign the CLA. |
29 |
|
30 |
> So, before I pursue more work on the CLA I would like to ask all |
31 |
> developers and contributors: |
32 |
|
33 |
> - Would you sign a "Gentoo Contributor License Agreement", similar |
34 |
> to the current draft in [4]? |
35 |
|
36 |
> Please reply to me personally; I shall post a summary to the |
37 |
> gentoo-project mailing list in one week from now. |
38 |
|
39 |
Time to post a summary: I have received 24 answers in total, 22 from |
40 |
developers and 2 from users. |
41 |
|
42 |
9 answers said they would sign such an agreement, |
43 |
12 answers said they would not sign it, or would not be allowed to |
44 |
by their employer, |
45 |
3 answers were undecided or non-committal. |
46 |
|
47 |
It is still difficult to extrapolate from these numbers. My impression |
48 |
(also from replies in mailing lists) is that achieving 50% coverage |
49 |
would be a very optimistic assumption. Also there were some very |
50 |
active devs amongst the "no" replies. |
51 |
|
52 |
For the time being, we have therefore removed the FLA/CLA section from |
53 |
the (pre-)draft of the copyright policy [2]. I shall post it soon as a |
54 |
GLEP draft for wider rewiev. |
55 |
|
56 |
Thanks to everyone who has replied. |
57 |
|
58 |
Ulrich |
59 |
|
60 |
|
61 |
[1] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-project/message/4958621b17b00eac7aaca1c8737b8b57 |
62 |
[2] https://dev.gentoo.org/~ulm/glep-drafts/glep-0076.html |
63 |
[3] https://dev.gentoo.org/~ulm/glep-drafts/glep-0076.html#certificate-of-origin |
64 |
[4] https://dev.gentoo.org/~ulm/cla/cla.pdf |