The standard Apache contribution process goes something like this :

  a) Any individual that is a committer must have
     on file an "Individual Contributor License Agreement"[1]
     This document is a statement from the individual that says
     that anything they contribute is their original work that
     they are free to license under the Apache License.

  b) Any other entity can make contributions to the project via
     a "Software Grant"[2] or through the modified "Corporate
     Contributor License Agreement"[3].  Through this, if accepted,
     the documentation is registered with the Apache Incubator, and
the contribution goes into the SVN repository of the accepting project.

We will continue with these processes, but due to the extremely sensitive legal and political nature of our project, I'd like to discuss adding some additional constraints and processes in order to ensure that from the beginning, the codebase we maintain and develop has especially good tracking and oversight.

First, as part of the Apache Harmony project, we keep a registry of all 'bulk' contributions. This doesn't replace the tracking the incubator does for these, but augments it - I think we would be well served if we internally tracked where code came from, and where we used it. One of the lessons that I learned with Apache Geronimo is that for things like this, there never is too much information or careful oversight and screening, because even for things that are clean and clear, you want to avoid any confusion or FUD about materials later on.

Second, any contribution by an individual committer that is "bulk" - a quantity of code that is "re-purposed", "re-licensed" or "re- contributed", e.g. any bit of code that had been used elsewhere - be also registered as such. We may or may not want to go as far as a software grant from that committer. I'm not sure that there is any purpose to asking for one, but am interested in what others think.

For any bulk contribution, we could have a checklist like the following to help track where code is coming from, and help remind committers about our contribution rules.

Contribution Checklist for Individual Bulk Contribution
--------------------------------------------------------

1) Identification

  Please provide the following information

 - Name of the committer and apache ID
 - Names of all authors of the code or other material being submitted

2) Author's Permission

  If you did not write the material yourself, you would
  need to have a written agreement with those who did write
  the material that either gives you ownership of the material
  or otherwise provides you sufficient rights to submit this
  material to the project on their behalf?

  - If you do not have such an agreement, then do not submit
    this Contribution.

  - If you do have such an agreement, you should provide
    details of this agreement.

3) All Authors Are Committers

    If you did not write the material yourself, are all of
    the authors committers to Apache Harmony and authorized to
    participate in the related project component? If not,
    then you should not submit this Contribution, although the
    Corporate Contributor License Agreement may apply.

3) Re-purposed or Re-Licensed

   Did you submit this Contribution to another open
   source or proprietary project?

   - If so, then you should provide details with the submission.

Comments?

geir


[1] http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt
[2] http://www.apache.org/licenses/software-grant.txt
[3] http://www.apache.org/licenses/cla-corporate.txt


--
Geir Magnusson Jr                                  +1-203-665-6437
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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