[IAEP] Sugar Labs Individual Membership

[Chris Ball]

Hi,

On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 07:06:12PM -0500, David Farning wrote:
> > > What's the Individual Contributor Agreement, and why would we want one
> > > of those?  Communities should wait until they get large before they
> > > start instituting bureaucracy that turns their potential new members
> > > away..
>
> Most project have some sort of agreement. 

Citation?  Many of the largest free software projects in existence 
have no such thing -- GNOME, Ubuntu, the Linux kernel -- and each
has widespread ties with all kinds of businesses.

> Sometime they are as simple as 'I am who I say I am and have the right
> to contribute what I will contribute.
> 
> One of my goals is for a vibrant ecosystem of businesses, NFPs and NGOs
> to form around Sugar.  If a contributor agree makes them more
> comfortable, it will be worth the head aches.

I still think this is not a good idea.  I'm not sure what it's gaining
us -- are you saying we'd refuse code from people who are unwilling to
sign such an agreement?  If the intent is to prove something about our 
codebase, then what about the code that's written before the agreement
comes into existence?  What happens when OLPC merges some donated code 
but the Sugar Labs rules demand an agreement for it?

I'm struck by the disconnect between Greg's advice of "let anyone who 
says they want to be a member be a member" and this new "let anyone who 
enters into a legal agreement with us be a member"; my intuition sides 
on the relaxed side of the continuum.

- Chris.
-- 
Chris Ball   <cjb at laptop.org>