Open Stack

On 04/03/2015 12:04 PM, Stefano Maffulli wrote:
> On Fri, 2015-04-03 at 09:38 -0400, Sean Dague wrote:
>> This remains a real and unaddressed issue. From today's Nova IRC channel.
>>
>> "<luv> So i got stuck while following the code contribution
>> docs/process. Gotta wait for my employer to sign Corporate Contributor
>> License Agreement ... oh well, 5 lines of code."
>>
>> Those 5 lines of code fix a Nova live migration scenario. Because of the
>> CLA that fix is unlikely to land in Kilo.
> 
> This sort of comments is IMHO unrelated to what (potential) contributors
> have to sign to submit a change to OpenStack.
> 
> From conversations I had with multiple lawyers, there seem to be an
> agreement that if a contributor has doubts that 5 lines of code can
> infringe on a patent owned by their employer, then they can't contribute
> that code to OpenStack without asking for employer's clearance. DCO
> wouldn't have an impact on this scenario, the contributor would have to
> ask for permission to the employer in that case, too.

I respectfully disagree with this characterization. I'm actually going
through this with one of my employees right now on a CLA that is not
OpenStack's.

The conversation about whether or not the patch or set of work is ok or
infringing is pretty easy to have - it took about 1 minute. NOW - on the
other hand, once you need Hewlett-Packard to have their lawyers actually
sign and execute a legal document with another company ... let me tell
you, it's not worth it unless I am planning substantial and ongoing work.

That said - I do believe that Jonathan's idea of how to make this better
is good and worth folks hearing.

> IMHO again, we may want to have another conversation (on
> legal-discuss?): do we need a process in cases of small contributions
> from occasional contributor, one where the patch is trivial enough to be
> proposed by an ATC instead?  
> 
>> Is there an update on where the foundation stands on the CLA?
> 
> Last update is a discussion on the infra list. Thread starts here:
> 
> http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-infra/2015-March/002525.html
> 
> 
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