openstack/governance
Code Issues Proposed changes

Recommendation to Adopt DCO as CLA

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At its July 2014 meeting, the OpenStack Foundation Board of Directors
heard information about the impact and options to address the
OpenStack Contributor License Agreement.  One of the questions raised
was whether the issues being brought forward were simply the opinion
of one member of the Board.

This resolution clarifies that the TC believes that the current CLA is
problematic and the DCO should be considered instead.

Change-Id: I5da90bd9ae3c7c08c028aa8dd3d0521b8b44d593
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James E. Blair 2014-09-09 14:55:04 -07:00
parent 0e1d1a992d
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===============================================
2014-09-09 Recommendation to Adopt DCO as CLA
===============================================
The OpenStack Technical Committee, representing the developer
community, requests that the Board of Directors consider implementing
the `Developer Certificate of Origin`_ (DCO) as the Contributor
License Agreement (CLA) for the OpenStack project.
The current CLA is a barrier to contributions from new developers
because it is a unique and unfamiliar legal document that must be
reviewed. Many developers are uncertain as to what its provisions
actually are. Instead, most developers would be far more comfortable
with the common understanding provided by the well-known Apache
License (whose provisions are understood by developers and corporate
counsels alike).
As the OpenStack project grows, we need to continually recruit new
developers to the project as well as convince new users that they will
be able to contribute. The current CLA is a warning flag to some open
source developers that the project does not operate in the way they
expect an open source project to work, and it makes it more difficult
for users to contribute simple fixes easily.
The need for the project and its contributors to understand and agree
upon the terms under which contributions are made is important. The
DCO accomplishes that by indicating that developers are responsible
for the code that they contribute and that they understand that the
contribution is under the terms of the Apache License. This simple
process is familiar to developers and legal counsels and is all that
is required for the licensing needs of OpenStack.
.. _Developer Certificate of Origin: http://developercertificate.org/