IMO, the foundation and the project should do nothing associated with
this. It should neither encourage or condone it. In no way should we enter
into any agreement, contract, whatever, w/ Tidelift. If Tidelift wishes to
work independently and directly w/ people, that's fine. But having the ASF
and/or the project involved at any level should be disallowed.
We cannot also ignore the obvious self-serving nature of the request by
Tidelift and if we are comfortable with them using this as an opportunity
for promotion.
On Jan 11, 2022, at 4:49 PM, Ralph Goers <ralph.go...@dslextreme.com>
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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