CLA requirements

[Karsten Wade]

On Fri, 2007-02-23 at 20:58 -0600, Mike McGrath wrote:
> Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> > When it was started, it was precisely meant for people to be able to 
> > represent Fedora easily in events and generally act as regional 
> > contacts. Only a very small portion of these submit any sort of 
> > content. Now everybody has redefined it into all sort of fancy things. 
> > To reiterate, this conversation was not about ambassadors in 
> > particular but to get a legal understanding of what groups require CLA.
> Sounds like its been a success then :-)  One thing we've talked about 
> off and on is what exactly it means to be a 'contributor'.  This thread 
> may be relevant to that.

Interesting point, yes.  To refer back up to Rahul's comment, the CLA
covers contributions of content.  What is content?

When you and I stand in one place together, breathing the same air, and
discussing Fedora ... the content of our conversation is about Fedora.

When we were at FUDCon discussing ideas, were those ideas not content
covered under the CLA?

Is leadership a contribution?  Or only the changes made in UTF-8
characters on a page in the Wiki?  Or only in CVS?

As a person whose largest contribution is often the ideas I come up
with, I feel very strongly that my ideas are i) contributions, and ii)
covered by the CLA.  I'd think Rahul would feel the same way,
considering how many ideas he has contributed to Fedora.

The gradient we may be wanting to define is, how much damage
(intentional or otherwise) can an individual make with their
contribution?  The higher the damage level, the higher the risk to the
Fedora Project.  The higher the risk, the more trust mechanisms should
be required.

Following that direction, we avoid entirely the discussion of what is
content and what is a contribution.  A simple, generic definition should
suffice: "If you provide something to the Fedora Project and did not get
paid in a recognized currency or otherwise receive fair market value in
trade, it is a contribution."

There is danger in trying to define who needs to sign a CLA by if they
are a contributor.  The rule really is, everyone who contributes needs
to agree to (sign) the CLA.  The only question is, do they all have to
agree to (sign) it using the same method?

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE, 108 Editor    ^     Fedora Documentation Project 
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