contributor license agreement (CLA) (was: Upcoming project ownership changes)

[Brad Bishop]

On Wed, 2018-02-14 at 07:54 +0100, Paul Menzel wrote:
> Am 14.02.2018 um 04:53 schrieb Brad Bishop:
> 
> > Under the new charter, contributors will be required to sign a
> > contributor license agreement.  There will be corporate (your
> > company
> > signs once for all future contributions originating from your
> > company)
> > and individual agreements available:
> > 
> > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1veiAjszrhgabA8XrJWjYCs7lyXIhs5r
> > cXWgaeuW-bT8
> > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m61YH8GSzQpYVt5YG95fb2QNy1Gs--1
> > -oLD3znqPNQw
> > 
> > Please work with your legal team (if using the corporate CLA) or
> > sign
> > the individual CLA now and send them to me to avoid any delays in
> > your
> > development work flow when the transfer occurs.
> 
> Could you please elaborate, why CLAs are needed? 

I am not a lawyer but my understanding is that it protects the users of
OpenBMC from a contribution to the project by a contributor that did
not have the necessary grants to make the submission in the first
place.  I found this page to provide a good layman's overview of the
benefits: http://oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/cla

> The Linux Kernel is 
> under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation, and no CLAs are needed 
> there. CLAs are a great burden, as the legal department gets
> involved, 

There are successful Linux Foundation projects that do have CLAs. 
While I can't argue that signing doesn't add any delays, use of the
corporate CLA will minimize this effort to a one-time-only cost and
lower the risk associated with using the project for our users.

> and should be avoided at all costs, as contributors want to advance 
> OpenBMC and not do paperwork.



> 
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Paul