Re: Dev - OFBiz - next steps

[Jacopo Cappellato]

Hi all,

I think that now we have all the information necessary to start to
collect the iCLA from the OFBiz contributors past and present.

What are the next steps?

Here is a draft for this task:

1) send a mail to all the developers that in the past had commit
privileges in CVS/SVN to ask them to sign the iCLA to agree to donate
OFBiz to the ASF (any idea for the text of the email?)

2) add a message at the top of the OFBiz website with something like
this: "We are in the process of moving OFBiz codebase to the ASL 2.0; we
have already contacted all the main developers to sign an agreement
(iCLA) to express their willingness for this process; if you think you
are a developer but you have not been contacted by us, please send a
signed copy of the iCLA to us or contact us for further clarifications
and such within 30 (60?) days from now."

3) post a similar message to the mail lists (and maybe in Sourceforge
and java.net)

4) should we also contact also the authors listed in the OFBiz source files?

5) contact other persons if we know that have significantly contributed
to OFBiz: any ideas?

I think that we should ask them to post the signed iCLA by traditional
mail (to Undersun?).

Any comments?

Jacopo

PS: I don't want to be tedious but... I still am not so sure that asking
them to sign the iCLA will make a lot of sense... unless we clearly list
in the iCLA the software components that we will donate to the ASF;
something similar to the "ASF License grant"
(http://www.apache.org/licenses/software-grant.txt) used for IP
clearance: "List of software and other intellectual property covered by
this agreement:"

Ok... I know I'm boring!!! :-)



David E. Jones wrote:

> On Feb 13, 2006, at 9:26 AM, J Aaron Farr wrote:
>
>> On 2/13/06, Jacopo Cappellato <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>> J Aaron,
>>>
>>> thanks for your feedback.
>>> Sorry but I still have some doubts about this:
>>>
>>> if a guy signs an iCLA in which he states that he agrees to release
>>> under the ASL all the work (present and future) that he sends to the ASF
>>> (thru mailing lists, Jira, SVN etc...), in which way this agreement will
>>> address the work that the guy did and donated in the past under a
>>> different licence and to a different project/community?
>>
>> Incubating OFBiz = present contribution.
>>
>> For former contributors, the purpose of the iCLA is to cover this
>> current contribution to the Incubator.  While the contribution may be
>> in the past as far as OFBiz is concerned, it's in the present as far
>> as the ASF is concerned.  In other words, the contributor is
>> re-contributing the code as part of the incubation grant.
>
> Yes, this makes sense. We are basically getting together as a big group
> of people who have written things for OFBiz and contributing them all to
> the ASF. This is the only way to do it as technically no single entity
> owns all of the OFBiz code.
>
> As far as picking on the term "present" goes it could be interpreted as
> the initial code contribution as J Aaron described, or the way I was
> thinking of it was that technically in licensing there is no "past" it
> is the present state of the work or a particular state of the work that
> is of concern.
>
> -David
>

 
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[davidnwelton]

On 2/14/06, Jacopo Cappellato <[hidden email]> wrote:

> I think that now we have all the information necessary to start to
> collect the iCLA from the OFBiz contributors past and present.
>
> What are the next steps?
>
> Here is a draft for this task:

> 1) send a mail to all the developers that in the past had commit
> privileges in CVS/SVN to ask them to sign the iCLA to agree to donate
> OFBiz to the ASF (any idea for the text of the email?)

Something along these lines:

"Hi,  I'm contacting you about your contributions to OFBiz - the Open
for Business project.  We recently decided to go through the
incubation process in order to join the Apache Software Foundation.
We feel that this will be beneficial in that it gives the project a
legal backing, more visibility .... end to world hunger... world
peace...etc...   Of course, OFBiz will continue to be a
community-developed open source project under control of its
developers.

As part of this move, we're required to do some due diligence in terms
of "intellectual property", and one of the things that entails is
asking past committers to sign off on the contributions they made to
OFBiz.  Therefore, we are writing to ask if you would be so kind as to
to mail or fax the following form (icla URL) to XXXXX-fax or
YYYYYYY-postal address.  If you have any questions or comments about
the process, don't hesitate to ask.

The OFBiz team - David E. Jones, et al...
"

> 2) add a message at the top of the OFBiz website with something like
> this: "We are in the process of moving OFBiz codebase to the ASL 2.0; we
> have already contacted all the main developers to sign an agreement
> (iCLA) to express their willingness for this process; if you think you
> are a developer but you have not been contacted by us, please send a
> signed copy of the iCLA to us or contact us for further clarifications
> and such within 30 (60?) days from now."

Sure - you could put up a page with the text of the email going out.

> 3) post a similar message to the mail lists (and maybe in Sourceforge
> and java.net)

> 4) should we also contact also the authors listed in the OFBiz source files?

I'd say that it would be a good idea to put a big list in subversion,
and use that to coordinate who contacts who, who has been contacted,
and who has responded positively.  Definitely contact people listed as
authors, but be sure to do it according to which code they worked on
(don't contact the tomcat authors, for instance:-)

> 5) contact other persons if we know that have significantly contributed
> to OFBiz: any ideas?
>
> I think that we should ask them to post the signed iCLA by traditional
> mail (to Undersun?).

Probably best/easiest to send them directly to the ASF, as that's
listed in the icla text.

> PS: I don't want to be tedious but... I still am not so sure that asking
> them to sign the iCLA will make a lot of sense... unless we clearly list
> in the iCLA the software components that we will donate to the ASF;
> something similar to the "ASF License grant"
> (http://www.apache.org/licenses/software-grant.txt) used for IP
> clearance: "List of software and other intellectual property covered by
> this agreement:"

I don't think this has been a problem in the past... I think we can
deal with any issues as they come up.

--
David N. Welton
 - http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/

Linux, Open Source Consulting
 - http://www.dedasys.com/
 
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