On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 4:16 AM, Jörg Schmidt <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello, > >> I've heard some discussion and interest in this topic off-list. There >> has been some practical experience, but nothing that we've written >> down or promoted. I'd be interested in seeing if we can come up with >> some solid best practices. >> >> The problem: Many (most?) open source contributors are not opposed to >> AOO or LO. They are just interested in helping out. If they produce >> a patch, or documentation, fix a bug or add a translation, they want >> to maximize the public good that comes from that work. License >> differences are confusing and frustrating and bring them no joy. They >> want a set of clear instructions for how they can do the most good >> with the least process overhead. >> >> Naturally, I'm looking at this from the AOO side. But most of these >> issues are symmetrical. So for sake of argument, suppose I identify >> myself primarily as a LibreOffice developer/translator/technical >> author, and I want to make my work available more broadly. What >> should I do? As I see it, the issues are threefold: communications, >> technical integration and license. >> >> On the communications side, how do I let AOO know that I've done work >> that I want to contribute to them? Sending a note to dev@ or posting >> a patch in AOO's BZ would work, of course. But both require extra >> work for the contributor. Are there any lighter weight ways of doing >> this? For example, could we suggest a tag that could be used in git >> or Bugzilla, for the contributor to indicate their intent that the >> contribution be made available to AOO as well? Something like >> #AOOCONTRIBUTION ? That would make it easy for us to search for such >> items. >> >> Technical integration -- Due to divergence between the projects, not >> every LO patch can be applied to AOO automatically. Some will, but >> many will require adaptation. Certainly the contributor could >> integrate and build their patch for both products. That would be >> idea. But it is asking a lot. Would we accept less? Or maybe we >> sugest areas where technical integration would be easier and require >> no extra work? Otherwise, integration would require extra work on our >> end. But this is not fatal. In fact it could lead to a set of "easy >> tasks" for new developers. >> >> License -- the differences here are well-known, but are easily solved. >> A contributor merely needs to state that they are making their patch >> available to AOO under ALv2. There are various ways to record this >> fact publicly. One is to make the statement in the source system (git >> or BZ). But that is extra work. Another way might be submit an iCLA >> to Apache. Another way might be to publicly record an intention on >> our dev@ list, along the lines of, "All of my (future/past) >> LibreOffice contributions should be considered also contributions >> under the Apache License 2.0 to the Apache OpenOffice project". >> >> Another other ideas? > > Would it be possible to agree on this, a _short official statement_ of the > AOO project, which could then be translated into several languages and used > in many ways? > Just the mention of the necessary proper licensing (Apache license helps both > projects, LGPL license helps only one project) seems to me of great practical > importance. > > I could e.g. very well imagine something like writing in a flyer or included > in a AOO distribution CD. >
This should be possible. Right now I'm mainly gathering ideas and feedback. Then I can propose some specific wording. If that is good, then we can think about translations. -Rob > > Greetings, > Jörg >
