contributor license agreement (CLA)

[Paul Menzel]

Dear Brad,


Thank you for your response.

On 02/14/18 15:35, Brad Bishop wrote:
> 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/1veiAjszrhgabA8XrJWjYCs7lyXIhs5rcXWgaeuW-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

Thank you for the URL, but, unfortunately, it doesn’t answer the 
question what the advantage over the Linux kernel [1] procedure is.

>> 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.

Brad, who decided, that CLA are a requirement? To my knowledge, CLAs are 
only needed, if you think about changing the license in the future. 
Besides that, there is *no* advantage, and the Linux Kernel procedure 
should be used. It just scares off people wanting to contribute small 
fixes and improvements.


Kind regards,

Paul


[1] 
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/submitting-patches.html#sign-your-work-the-developer-s-certificate-of-origin

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