Garrett D'Amore writes: > It seems that we (OpenSolaris) need to have some kind of legal oversight > committee or somesuch.
We've discussed that issue before, and I suspect it's a lot more involved than anyone wants to bite off right now, and the benefits are much less clear than they should be. To do that, we would need to have a distinct budget and a distinct legal entity. That may be doable, but I doubt that it's the biggest issue we have to solve right now, and the same people who'd be working on that are the ones now working on web site and tool upgrades. It wouldn't come for free. > It also comes, as I discussed, because of a hole that will be created > when we open up the source tree to putbacks from outside of Sun (and > therefore don't require Sun's Open Source Review.) They'll still require Sun's contributor agreement, which is apart from OSR. > To be more clear, someone needs to make sure that the code being > committed into OpenSolaris has licenses that are compatible with the > project, and which do not create undue restrictions. And also, for > example, checking that LGPL libraries or programs don't call GPL > libraries, etc. That's what the contributor agreement does. The "new foundation" would need to do the same, but likely starting from scratch. I agree it's attractive to consider this, but my inclination is to say that we ought to stick with the existing agreement (even if some may not like the idea of relying on Sun's good intentions), and avoid the complexity that launching a new entity would involve. That can come later, when most of the rest of it has been repaired -- like the closed C-teams, the missing source commit rights, and the lack of external bug tracking. Of course, if someone thinks the legal part is "easy," he can have at it today. Take a copy of the code, create new communities, and give it a go. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <james.d.carlson at sun.com> Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
