Upcoming project ownership changes

Upcoming project ownership changes

[Brad Bishop]

OpenBMC community

During your travels you may have noticed that the OpenBMC brand is
somewhat fragmented.  There are several BMC firmware ecosystems out
there today, of which this project is just one.

For the past year, the leaders of these ecosystems have been hard at
work to bring all the projects together and move forward with a single
industry-wide OpenBMC.

I'm happy to report that these industry leaders have rallied around
your community as the meeting point.  Very soon it will get a lot more
busy around here.  

To this end, IBM will be ceding stewardship of this project to the
Linux Foundation in the very near future.  You can find the project
charter here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uBbi5rDhWqj8Al-eoNLxERZ9OK8KVMZThOu
S08-cYto

In the longer term I'm optimistic all this means change, growth and
success for all of us.  In the shorter term, I don't anticipate any
major changes in the day to day of what we all do, with one exception. 
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/1veiAjszrhgabA8XrJWjYCs7lyXIhs5rcXWg
aeuW-bT8
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m61YH8GSzQpYVt5YG95fb2QNy1Gs--1-oLD
3znqPNQw

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.

-brad

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

[Paul Menzel]

Dear Brad,


Am 14.02.2018 um 04:53 schrieb Brad Bishop:

[…]

> I'm happy to report that these industry leaders have rallied around
> your community as the meeting point.  Very soon it will get a lot more
> busy around here.
> 
> To this end, IBM will be ceding stewardship of this project to the
> Linux Foundation in the very near future.  You can find the project
> charter here:
> 
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uBbi5rDhWqj8Al-eoNLxERZ9OK8KVMZThOuS08-cYto

(Note, the URL is wrapped in your message.)

Thank you. Cooperating is definitely a good thing. My knowledge of the 
goals and operation of the Linux Foundation is not good enough to 
comment on that.

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


Kind regards,

Paul

Re: 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

Re: contributor license agreement (CLA)

[Paul Menzel]

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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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Re: contributor license agreement (CLA)

[Brad Bishop]

On Wed, 2018-02-14 at 15:51 +0100, Paul Menzel wrote:
> Dear Brad,
> 
> 
> Thank you for your response.

No problem!

> 
> > 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.

From the article:

"The purpose of a CLA is to ensure that the guardian of a project’s
outputs has the necessary ownership or grants of rights over all
contributions to allow them to distribute under the chosen license."

Again I am not a lawyer but based on my limited understanding, I don't
believe projects that only utilize a DCO (like Linux) can make these
assurances to their users.  This is the advantage - rather than
deferring this risk to the users of the project, we provide software
free of these concerns from the very start.

> 
> 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. 

I think the evidence suggests otherwise.  There are many, many OSS
projects out there - many highly successful, that require a CLA.
Including Linux Foundation projects.  If there were no advantage at all
then this would not be the case.

> It just scares off people wanting to contribute small 
> fixes and improvements.

I concede the point, but as with any decision it is about cost/benefit 
- the cost being the point you have raised here, the benefit being
providing our users with software guaranteed to be free of any legal
infringement.

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

[Michael E Brown]

On Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 07:54:40AM +0100, Paul Menzel wrote:
> Dear Brad,
> 
> 
> Am 14.02.2018 um 04:53 schrieb Brad Bishop:
> 
> […]
> 
> > I'm happy to report that these industry leaders have rallied around
> > your community as the meeting point.  Very soon it will get a lot more
> > busy around here.
> > 
> > To this end, IBM will be ceding stewardship of this project to the
> > Linux Foundation in the very near future.  You can find the project
> > charter here:
> > 
> > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uBbi5rDhWqj8Al-eoNLxERZ9OK8KVMZThOuS08-cYto
> 
> (Note, the URL is wrapped in your message.)
> 
> Thank you. Cooperating is definitely a good thing. My knowledge of the goals
> and operation of the Linux Foundation is not good enough to comment on that.
> 
> > 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? 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, and should be avoided
> at all costs, as contributors want to advance OpenBMC and not do paperwork.

Interesting that this immediately is flagged as a point of contention. Here is
a counterpoint from Bradley Kuhn:

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2014/jun/09/do-not-need-cla/

For the record, I strongly oppose CLAs. However, I will submit this to our
legal team for review.

I don't envy you having to have this same conversation over and over and over
and over again over the coming years.

--
Michael