Rob, I recommend projects to request ICLAs whenever accepting a contribution. Signing an ICLA has no correlation to being accepted as a committer.
John On Tue Jan 20 2015 at 6:04:25 AM Rob Vesse <rve...@dotnetrdf.org> wrote: > All > > I keep an eye on the Lucene.Net TLP since I use it in some of my other > projects and after a long hiatus the activity in that community has picked > up considerably. However there is one thing that has caught my eye that > they've been doing recently which I'm not sure is strictly necessary. I > noticed that as they've been recruiting new contributors (not committers) > for their porting efforts they've been asking these contributors to sign > the ICLA before they will accept a pull request. > > My understanding was always that the ICLA is only required if you are a > committer though may still be desirable for larger contributions, quoting > from http://www.apache.org/licenses/#clas - > > "The ASF desires that all contributors of ideas, code, or documentation to > the Apache projects complete, sign, and submit (via postal mail, fax or > email) an Individual Contributor License Agreement > <http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt> (1) (CLA) [ PDF form > <http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.pdf> ]. The purpose of this agreement > is to clearly define the terms under which intellectual property has been > contributed to the ASF and thereby allow us to defend the project should > there be a legal dispute regarding the software at some future time. A > signed CLA is required to be on file before an individual is given commit > rights to an ASF project." > > Note the use of the word "desires" here, only committers are required to > have an agreement on file. Contributors can always make contributions > without one since the Apache License explicitly has a clause that covers > this (http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0#contributions). > > Actual committers still have to merge and push the pull requests made by > contributors to the ASF repos so from an ASF perspective the provenance of > the contributions is OK since we know they were pushed by a committer > (though obviously committers still need to be reviewing the contributions > to check for any possible IP violations) > > Is my understanding on this right? > > If so I shall be pinging their dev list to remind them of this since IMO > they are putting a potentially unnecessary hurdle in front of new > contributors. > > Additionally they don't appear to have offered committership/PMC > membership to any of these new people who have signed ICLAs and whose pull > requests are getting merged so I will be pinging the list to remind them > about this regardless. I've seen that there are several people who've > made considerable sustained contributions which in any other ASF project > I've been involved in would have earned them sufficient merit to be > offered at least committership (if not PMC membership) by now. > > Regards, > > Rob > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org > >
