Question about community patchs and the open-source licencin

[lgr]

Hi,

There is a question in the Discussion Forum about permitting the community to submit changes to Alfresco, so that they are included in the open-source version.
(http://www.alfresco.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=696)

What is Alfresco point of view on it ?

Does someone external to Alfresco have to build a web site which centralizes community patches, plugins and improvements, and provides custom builds with these changes, or do you prefer to include these patches in the open-source version (perhaps in a "contrib" folder), via source or binary distribs ?

Laurent.

[davidc]

Hi,

Our aim is to build a "full-fledged" open source project with community support.   That includes both contributions back to the core and an active community building additional cool stuff with and around that core e.g. actions, templates, models, transformations or even full apps.

We already have community contributions included in the project since v1.0 e.g. meta-data extraction, ftp publish, and of course, language bundles.

If you wish to contribute, you need to sign and fax the Contribution Agreement found at http://www.alfresco.org/resource/AlfrescoContributionAgreementv2.pdf   which needs to be faxed to us.  The fax number is found on alfresco.org.

The code or a link to the code can be sent to info at alfresco dot org in any form but an SVN patch is the easiest for us to manage.   Public read access to our SVN is available - please see http://www.alfresco.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=563 for details.  Please note that we do some review / testing of the code first before it is added to the core.

What I've described is today's (ad-hoc) process.  We want to encourage contributions and a developer community, so we're planning the addition of a forge capability to the alfresco web site, allowing community projects to be hosted (including language bundles).   We would also consider opening write access to dedicated contributors.

[lgr]

If you wish to contribute, you need to sign and fax the Contribution Agreement found at http://www.alfresco.org/resource/AlfrescoContributionAgreementv2.pdf   which needs to be faxed to us.  The fax number is found on alfresco.org.

Hi David,

This is a great news.
But the fax process is among the open-source community rather .. hmm .. unusual.

Isn't it possible that as soon as you write some code, or give some contribution, you are automatically under the mpl licence ? So that there is an implicit agreement to the licence..

And the second question is how you could maintain two different implementations of the same functionnalities, i.e. groups support ?

Laurent.

[johnp]

The contribution agreement is only required for a developer (ie you can then make mutiple contributions although we are not obliged to accept them). The issue is not around the MPL but mainly that your contribution is your original work and free of any IP claim (especially if you have produced the contribution whilst in the employment or contract to another organisation.) The fax is for legal proof. Although this may be an extra document to sign it means we can keep Alfresco open.

We are happy to see other contibutions and we will be setting up a forge for any extensions that developers feel are valuable, these may or may not be included in the mainline code.

John Powell CEO Alfresco Software

[lgr]

John,

I understand your point of view, it just seems unusual to me compared to how one usually contribute to other open-source projects. I'm working with open-source softwares since 1994, and i've always seen that many people are willing to contribute as soon as submitting is easy. When trying to enforce some IP claim, submitting would be less interesting and motivating.

For example, i've submitted some language packs to Alfresco, i haven't signed any fax so far, and i did not even think i should sign any document to submit you something.

What i understand is that a developper working for a company which want to modify and use Alfresco, should submit you patches and give you the rights on them with a fax, so that Alfresco is changed to suit its needs, and you've no risk that the company asks you afterwards some fees for the code included. But a developper, which gives some contribution, regardless of its company wants to use or not Alfresco, does not have to sign a fax. And also, a standalone developper, not employed by any company does not have to sign a fax to submit contributions.

In my opinion, if the rule about signing or not the fax is clear, and not too hard (i.e. only companies customizing Alfresco for their own needs should sign a fax to give you their coding work), then you should receive much contributions. But if you require any contributer to sign a fax to submit a change, then i think that you would lose some of the positive aspects of open-source software.


Just to conclude, i think that code submitted to Alfresco is submitted under the MPL licence, so it is free of use, no ?

Anyway, Alfresco is gorgeous as is, this is a real joy to see such software in the open-source community.

Best regards,

Laurent.

[johnp]

Laurent,

Just to clarify, if it could work as you say we would be very happy. On the language packs we don’t see a risk as there is no new IP involved in a translation (it’s not like a novel) and the pack as you say is freely contributed (and easily removed). I hope you will sign the contribution agreement as others have.

However on the core code with maybe a piece of key functionality that all users take advantage of, imagine the following 2 scenarios:

a) We include such a contribution which later the employer of the contributor demands we remove as it was created without their consent by an employee under a contract that prohibited that act. We have no proof that we were released from liability and would have to remove the contribution and affect all users.
b) we include a contribution that turns out to be the code of a competitor and if proved to be infringing, we may not even be able at that point to find the contributor and prove we had not done this in some way ourselves.

So I think that it is not to onerous a process and it enables all our users (which include large corporations that cannot risk their CMS being non operational) to use the software with complete confidence as to its provenance.

Projects who do not run this process cannot give this IP indemnity to customers.

I think this is also analogous to the fact that the leading Open Source projects are filing patents, despite lobbying for no software patents, i.e. as a deterrent to the closed source companies from using their patents to stop open source. (And I won’t talk about the French nuclear arsenal)

So keep contributing, be pragmatic and look up at the sky without needing to worry about what may be behind you.

John

[lgr]

John,

I feel some true experience through your answer . I also have some experience on managing open-source projects, but not like yours in software companies. So i expect you're right, and must use this kind of agreement to protect yourself.

Well, i will happily sign and return your agreement, although our core business has nothing to do with developpment (although we devellop some open-source software because we need it and feel we must share it to make it evolve).

These was only my two cents and i was sure that submitting some code under the mpl licence statued implicitly that the company was agreeing on giving its code without any IP claim issue.

Thanks for your time to explain on these matters.

Best regards,

Laurent.

PS : you leaved "Apache Software Foundation" on the Alfresco Contribution Agreemend PDF :-).

[dserodio]

I understand your motivation, but, to quote Eric Raymond (The Cathedral and the Bazaar):

… the number of contributors (and, at second order, the success of projects) is strongly and inversely correlated with the number of hoops each project makes a contributing user go through …