[IAEP] Sugar Labs Individual Membership

[David Farning]

On Fri, 2008-09-12 at 01:33 +0100, Chris Ball wrote:
> 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.
> 

Fedora - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal/Licenses/CLA
Ubuntu - http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct
Apache - http://www.apache.org/licenses/#clas

> > 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.
> 

Signing the CLA is part of Fedora's "let anyone who says they want to be
a member be a member" process.

I recognize your unease at the added paperwork.  On this one, we are
going to have to see what the Oversight board decides based on the
advice of SFC.

thanks
david