Re: Is Freemarker becoming too process heavy? (was Re: Proposed policy change: Don't require CLA from contributos)

[Daniel Dekany]

Wednesday, June 21, 2017, 2:52:08 PM, John D. Ament wrote:

> All,
>
> I'm concerned with some of these threads I'm seeing w/r/t Freemarker.
> While I'm not a mentor on the project, I've been a user for a while and
> have been curious about Freemarker at Apache.
>
> I would not cite a CouchDB process from their old wiki.  First, its not
> clear if this is the most recent version (it mentions a migration to the
> new wiki and an external website which are red flags to me).

(It's not in their new Wiki... But then let's ignore it. There's still
LEGA-156.)

> Second, CouchDB has a much different model and contributor set than
> other projects do.
>
> I would cite a legal JIRA, and as far as I know everyone was already
> following this guide.
>
> I would also cite our legal guidelines
> https://www.apache.org/licenses/#clas in
> particular where it makes sense to expect an ICLA on file.  In general, ASF
> expects ICLAs for large enough contributions.  The size is at the
> discretion of the PMC receiving the contribution.  We do require ICLAs for
> committers to join a project (to receive an account, to receive write
> access) and many projects simply follow that model - you need an ICLA at
> that point in time.

I think what I'm proposing is pretty much the same, only it tells more
concrete details (which I believe is good for Committers who has to
merge stuff; or at least I find the ASF documentations pretty
scattered and at some places superficial). What am I missing?

As of https://www.apache.org/licenses/#clas, it says that:

  The ASF desires that all contributors of ideas, code, or
  documentation to any Apache projects complete, sign, and submit via
  email an Individual Contributor License Agreement (ICLA).

I doesn't talk about exceptions where an ICLA is not needed. But,
today I saw a thread on members@ where someone said ICLA is not needed
for mere contributors, only for Committers, and that led me to
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-156, where Legal says no
ICLA is needed for GitHub pull requests, etc.

> I would encourage Freemarker to keep things simple, especially since the
> total number of contributors is at 13.

But that's exactly why I wanted this. It is simpler for contributors
if they can just do a PR, without any paper work.

What do you mean by FM becoming process heavy? Which other threads do
you find concerning?

> John
>
> On Wed, Jun 21, 2017 at 6:48 AM Daniel Dekany  wrote:
>
>> Currently we strictly require a CLA (by which I mean an ICLA or CCLA)
>> for any contributions to be accepted, as
>> http://freemarker.org/contribute.html says.
>>
>> This practice was inherited from the pre-ASF times, when without
>> lawyers available, we tried to be on the safe side. But based on
>> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-156 and
>> https://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/CommitPolicy and some other mails we
>> can make things simpler for contributors (not to be confused with
>> committers).
>>
>> So I propose that we say that:
>>
>> - People sending contributions with GitHub pull requests need no CLA.
>>   But, before merging, we must check that:
>>   - The mail about the pull request was received to
>> notificati...@freemarker.incubator.apache.org, so that there's
>> a record of this even in the ASF infrastructure.
>>   - The files in the pull request has the standard ASF copyright
>> headers, or no copyright headers in files where that's normally
>> not present. There's no other conflicting copyright information
>> included either (like a such LICENSE file).
>> - People sending in patches as attachment to FreeMarker Jira issues
>>   need no CLA. But, before merging, we must check that:
>>   - It's clear from the wording of the issue that the user wishes to
>> contribute (as opposed to, for example, just showing an example).
>>   - Copyright headers are in order, just as with GitHub pull request.
>>
>> If someone contributes a bigger feature, yet they isn't a committer,
>> we might still ask a CLA though. But that can be dealt with when such
>> thing happens.
>>
>> --
>> Thanks,
>>  Daniel Dekany
>>
>>

-- 
Thanks,
 Daniel Dekany

Is Freemarker becoming too process heavy? (was Re: Proposed policy change: Don't require CLA from contributos)

[John D. Ament]

All,

I'm concerned with some of these threads I'm seeing w/r/t Freemarker.
While I'm not a mentor on the project, I've been a user for a while and
have been curious about Freemarker at Apache.

I would not cite a CouchDB process from their old wiki.  First, its not
clear if this is the most recent version (it mentions a migration to the
new wiki and an external website which are red flags to me).  Second,
CouchDB has a much different model and contributor set than other projects
do.

I would cite a legal JIRA, and as far as I know everyone was already
following this guide.

I would also cite our legal guidelines https://www.apache.org/licenses/#clas in
particular where it makes sense to expect an ICLA on file.  In general, ASF
expects ICLAs for large enough contributions.  The size is at the
discretion of the PMC receiving the contribution.  We do require ICLAs for
committers to join a project (to receive an account, to receive write
access) and many projects simply follow that model - you need an ICLA at
that point in time.

I would encourage Freemarker to keep things simple, especially since the
total number of contributors is at 13.

John

On Wed, Jun 21, 2017 at 6:48 AM Daniel Dekany  wrote:

> Currently we strictly require a CLA (by which I mean an ICLA or CCLA)
> for any contributions to be accepted, as
> http://freemarker.org/contribute.html says.
>
> This practice was inherited from the pre-ASF times, when without
> lawyers available, we tried to be on the safe side. But based on
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-156 and
> https://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/CommitPolicy and some other mails we
> can make things simpler for contributors (not to be confused with
> committers).
>
> So I propose that we say that:
>
> - People sending contributions with GitHub pull requests need no CLA.
>   But, before merging, we must check that:
>   - The mail about the pull request was received to
> notificati...@freemarker.incubator.apache.org, so that there's
> a record of this even in the ASF infrastructure.
>   - The files in the pull request has the standard ASF copyright
> headers, or no copyright headers in files where that's normally
> not present. There's no other conflicting copyright information
> included either (like a such LICENSE file).
> - People sending in patches as attachment to FreeMarker Jira issues
>   need no CLA. But, before merging, we must check that:
>   - It's clear from the wording of the issue that the user wishes to
> contribute (as opposed to, for example, just showing an example).
>   - Copyright headers are in order, just as with GitHub pull request.
>
> If someone contributes a bigger feature, yet they isn't a committer,
> we might still ask a CLA though. But that can be dealt with when such
> thing happens.
>
> --
> Thanks,
>  Daniel Dekany
>
>