Hi Ralph,
I think there's a fundraising angle to this as well due to the
acknowledgement requirement. David Nalley reached out to me with the
original Logging PMC thread as something he expected might need us to
get involved with. I'll be discussing this at our next fundraising
meeting Thursday. I have some similar concerns but I plan on holding
those until I've had a chance to discuss with the rest of the
fundraising committee. Thanks for raising this.
- Bob Paulin
ASF VP, Fundraising
On 1/11/2022 3:49 PM, Ralph Goers wrote:
Hello all,
Recently the Logging Services PMC was approached by Tidelift offering to
provide monetary support either to the project or individual committers. To
obtain that sponsorship the project has to agree to the terms at
https://support.tidelift.com/hc/en-us/articles/4406309657876-Lifter-agreement.
It appears that Struts has accepted this already.
Some PMC members are interested in pursuing this but I am questioning a)
whether the agreement conflicts with ASF practices and b) whether the legal
agreement is too ambiguous. Two ASF members commented on the Logging Services
private list that they had concerns about the agreement.
In response to these concerns I created
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-593. The guidance there seemed to
be that payment to the ASF by Tidelift would not be allowed but payment to
individuals might be. No guidance on the agreement was provided. It was
recommended I post here instead.
In looking for more clarification from Tidelift about their agreement and who
could receive payment we received this response:
Great follow up question, you are spot on. Each of the individuals on
the team page could become a lifter and the funds allocated for Log4j would be
split between them.
Additional pieces of information to add nuance:
* For someone to _start_ lifting a project with Tidelift, the
verification process involves us looking to official sources for
confirmation–such as the team page. After a project is lifted, the verification
process ultimately hinges on open communication between us and whichever lifter
has been nominated to be the primary contact (in full view of all of the
project's lifters so that we know there's shared agreement).
* Funds can be split any way you see fit, evenly or otherwise. In most
cases, we see an even split. In cases where the funds are directed back to a
foundation, 100% of the funds go to the foundation and the share assigned to
the lifters is 0%.
* This approach has allowed us to decouple any individual project's
governance from our own processes, and has proven to be effective in many
different contexts. As we grow, it may well be that our processes need to
evolve, so that's a conversation that I'm open to as we continue discussing :o)
So it is clear to me that Tidelift requires the project as a whole to approve
the agreement, even though only select individuals may choose to receive
payment, especially since one of the requirements is a public acknowledgment of
Tidelift on one of the project’s sites.
I find this problematic as I cannot reconcile how it is OK for individuals to
receive payment so that the ASF is not officially involved while at the same
time the PMC must approve the agreement for individuals to be able to accept
payment. Furthermore, I still have no idea whether the terms of the agreement
would put a PMC in conflict with ASF policies or whether the ambiguities in the
agreement would put the ASF in a bad place. I realize the ASF’s argument would
be “We have nothing to do with this” but I suspect that wouldn’t fly since the
PMC has to agree to it.
To be clear, I have no idea if this is the correct place to discuss this.
Personally, I was under the impression that a Legal Jira was where this kind of
stuff got resolved. But here I am.
Thoughts?
Ralph
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