On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 12:11 PM Matias N. <mat...@imap.cc> wrote: > I think that for any non-coding/boring task the best bet (barring a paid > employee) > is to crowdsource the effort. You could compare this to the task of enforcing > code style: > it would be a huge task to convert all NuttX files to follow the code style > and most likely > no one would ever offer to do it on their own. However, distributing the load > to every PR > author to adapt files they touch is a good way to make fair distribution of > the load. > > I think for IP clearance a CI check could be added by using the scripts I > made: each file touched > by a PR could be checked to see if it can be "Apachized" safely. If so, the > PR author would have to > include this change in the PR in a separate commit, with a commit message > holding relevant > output of the tool for tracing. If some files become problematic for this > process, they can be added > to an "ignored" list (or a "already converted" list). If that sounds > reasonable, I could look into it. > > Of course, that is the slow approach and can only considered a help (to > slowly reduce the problem > and avoid continuing to increase it), so for something more critical as IP > clearance I think > it should be possible to further distribute batches of files to verify/clear > to committers over some period > of time. From our website, I count ~15 non-mentor commiters. If each of those > would clear 50 files, > that gets us 1500 files cleared. That is ~15% of .c/.h files. That could be > repeated periodically (every couple > of months, for example) and it would get us much closer to compliance, not > counting the files cleared via the CI > procedure detailed before. > > A final point I would make is this: for such a large codebase, this kind of > non-coding tasks > (for example, documentation) will require the biggest effort and thus require > more help. In that > regard, growing the number of committers is very important. A call for > non-coders to help with CI > and documentation may attract some users interested in NuttX but not > confident yet with the codebase. > > Best, > Matias > > PS: similar the the "can be Apachized" CI check, I feel we should add a "has > the author signed an ICLA" > check eventually for non-Apache licensed files. Sometimes I see PRs from > authors who appear not to > be commiters and I wonder if we're not making the problem worse by further > introducing authors without > ICLAs.
Do we have documentation how to use the tools you made to do a proper IP clearance? Instead of trying to set aside a huge block of time to do IP clearance, if there is a clear documentation, I could do one or two files each day, like I have been doing for nxstyle. I would encourage all our committers and anyone who would like to become a committer by contributing to the project, to do the same thing. Just spend a few minutes each day clearing 1 or 2 files, and with ~15 committers doing that, we could clear ~100 files per week and start making a dent in this boring but necessary task. Nathan
