Re: [gentoo-project] Re: [gentoo-core] Re: Poll: Would you sign a Contributer License Agreement?

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 5:06 PM Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o> wrote:
>
> >>>>> On Mon, 25 Jun 2018, Denis Dupeyron wrote:
>
> > I have no opinion of the document itself, whatever it is. I was just
> > making you guys aware that if this did happen, I and a bunch of others
> > will be asked to stop contributing in any form until the document,
> > whether good or bad, was reviewed and us allowed to sign it.
>
> Note that technically, you don't _sign_ the certificate of origin
> (you would sign the FLA/CLA but we've dropped it, in the meantime).
> The only thing that will be required is adding a Signed-off-by line to
> commits, in order to certify that the contribution is under a free
> license.
>

Not sure I completely agree with the wording of your email, but in
general the DCO is a unilateral statement, not an agreement or a
contract.

It seems odd that an employer would have any concerns with signing a
statement of this kind.  Maybe if the Gentoo contribution was a work
for hire it might have a bit of bearing.  I'm not sure how many Gentoo
contributions are actually works for hire though.

Outside of work done on company time that is owned by my employer, the
place I work at doesn't have any restrictions on stuff I sign outside
of work.  Though, it seems like the tech industry is full of
over-reach like this.

In any case, I think Denis's comment should be taken for what it is -
a note that it could cause issues for some.  I do think it would be
helpful if people chimed in with "I checked at work and I can't sign
this" rather than "somebody somewhere might have a problem with this."
 I'm hearing a lot more of the latter than the former.

We could always approve the GLEP, then if everybody in the world says
they've been told they can't sign the DCO we can always un-approve the
GLEP.  It doesn't take anything more than a vote and a git hook
change.  Why people would wait to the last minute is beyond me, but
then again apparently somebody was complaining in IRC the other day
about being booted after not committing in a few years and not
checking his email for six months and therefore not replying to
multiple messages asking if he wanted to still be a dev...

-- 
Rich