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

[Alec Warner]

On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 11:53 AM, Denis Dupeyron <calchan@g.o> wrote:

> Replying to Rich's last message to reply to the thread, not to Rich
> specifically.
>
> I want to note here that if this comes into effect, and becomes
> mandatory, some critical pieces of Gentoo would go unmaintained for
> months, if not longer and possibly indefinitely, until the employer of
> the maintainers allows them to sign whatever it is you would require.
> I'm talking about portage and OpenRC, but there may be other examples.
> These particular projects are maintained by developers paid by their
> employer to work on them, and as such do much more than a loose team
> of unpaid developers. And although they were hired to so they would
> have to wait until the corporate legal arm of their employer approves
> them signing your document. That's like sending a message in a bottle
> if e.g. the employee is based in the US and lawyers in Japan (example
> not chosen at random).
>

I think you paint a fairly black and white picture here. If there are
*concrete* issues then I want to see them here (e.g. adopting a DCO means
these 5 people cannot contribute without some additional work) because its
up to Gentoo to work out these issues. Maybe that means accepting
contributions on a contingent basis while we work out the issues. Maybe it
means delaying making the DCO mandatory for everyone. Maybe it means
talking to lawyers to discuss specific legal problems.

None of these mean we shouldn't do a DCO. But if we never learn about these
issues, I don't see how we can move forward.


>
> And let's not forget about the dozens of contributors who would be
> barred from doing all the awesome stuff they do everyday across the
> entire tree.
>

I'd rather do what ulm did before and poll people about the DCO (the
original poll was about the CLA) than be subject to these arguments where
people make up numbers.


> Finally, think of the deterrent effect to potential new contributors.
> It's not like we get a ton of candidates these days, and like we have
> the slightest clue about recruiting them. There's a significant chance
> that adding such a legal barrier would end up slowly strangling Gentoo
> to death.


I'd rather do a DCO and see things like "well we tried to recruit 20 new
people but 15 of them left because of a DCO" than be subject to
unsubstantiated fear. At least on that basis we can decide that the DCO is
'too risky to staff' and stop requiring it. But that would be an experience
based on actually trying something.

-A