[sakai-pmc] grant Ben Holmes commit access to Signup tool

[Anthony Whyte]

>  If someone suggested a committer for a project of programmer at company.with.lots.of.patents would we reject the granting of commit rights based on who they worked for?


Under the scenario you describe an individual CLA would be regarded as insufficient.  The PMC would block the nomination while we consulted with the Apereo Licensing group, and if warranted, competent legal counsel.   This is not a theoretical proposition.    When Chuck Severance accepted part-time employment with Blackboard we sought and received in May 2012 a corporate contributor license agreement (CCLA) from Blackboard along with supporting documentation specifying Chuck, John Fontaine and George Kroner as authorized committers.  Chuck has noted on several occasions that Blackboard funded his Sakai work during the period; I very much doubt that we would have accepted his Blackboard-funded contributions or those of other named Blackboard employees without a CCLA on file.

If Pearson or Instructure forked Sakai and their devs later knocked on our door with pull requests accompanied by individually signed CLAs I expect that we would decline to accept their PRs until we had secured a corporate contributor agreement from their employer.

Anth 


anthony whyte | its and mlibrary | university of michigan | arwhyte at umich.edu | 517-980-0228


On Mar 20, 2014, at 6:23 AM, Matthew Buckett wrote:

> On 20 March 2014 01:44, Anthony Whyte <arwhyte at umich.edu> wrote:
>> Granting committer access to our core repo has legal implications both for
>> the project and the Foundation.  Ensuring the integrity of Apereo Sakai IP
>> and the copyright and patent grants required of committers is sufficient
>> justification for the PMC to exercise oversight of the process.  It falls
>> squarely within the PMC's operational remit, irrespective of the scope of
>> the request (global vs module).
> 
> Isn't the completion of the CLA as far as we go with this?
> 
> I can't see how the PMC can ensure the "intergrity of Apereo Sakai IP"
> and the "copyright and patent grants required of committers" beyond
> making sure that the committer has signed the CLA. If someone
> suggested a committer for a project of
> programmer at company.with.lots.of.patents would we reject the granting
> of commit rights based on who they worked for?
> 
>> Leaving it to a 1 or 2 committers of a core module to decide on their own
>> whether someone gets commit access to the Sakai core repo is not good
>> practice.
> 
> I think having the PMC aware of what is happening is very good, it
> means the PMC becomes aware of who is working in particular areas and
> keeps people in touch with changes to the community.
> 
>> Requests for core commit should involve a conversation with the
>> PMC, acknowledging at the same time that the advocacy of veteran committers
>> in support of a candidate will carry great weight, particularly so in cases
>> where PMC members and other veteran committers "don't know the person."
> 
> -- 
>  Matthew Buckett, VLE Developer, IT Services, University of Oxford

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