Hi Mark, On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 21:51, Mark Reinhold <m...@sun.com> wrote: >> Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 11:27:26 -0700 >> From: Martin Buchholz <marti...@google.com> > >> On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 15:44, ulf.zi...@gmx.de wrote: >>> Am 27.03.2009 22:49, Martin Buchholz schrieb: >>>> It's too difficult to give credit to external contributors. >>>> One problem is that the Contributed-by: line is a red flag to >>>> lawyers and other folks that might cause the legality of the change >>>> to be questioned without end. Let's try to get Ulf a proper commit bit >>>> and make sure the legal questions come to an end. >>> >>> Aren't "Contributed-by" and "author" comments usual practice in open >>> source products? Even in Sun's JRL source author was mentioned. I >>> think, the lawyer guys and girls from Sun should rethink that subject. >>> Ok, we will see ... >> >> The problem is more human. One would like to give credit for good >> ideas or good analysis, but the only official way to give credit in a >> commit message is via a simple >> Contributed-by: email-address >> which raises legal doubts even when there is no copyrighted material. > > Exactly what sort of legal doubts do you have in mind here? > > We already require the contributor of any nontrivial change to submit an > SCA prior to that change being integrated. Is that not sufficient?
I am worried about: - contributions that do not require a copyright assignment, e.g. an excellent bug report - contributions from a Google employee, because of repeated institutional amnesia that Google has a blanket SCA, which is not reflected in https://sca.dev.java.net/CA_signatories.htm >> I guess one can abuse the Summary: field to squeeze in thank-yous, >> but it's pretty obvious that you are circumventing the process. > > Perhaps -- but if we need to fix the process, then we can do that. It seems that for changes for which I have an external contributor, there is a large variety in the nature of the contribution; sometimes an off-hand remark will cause an avalanche of work on my part. The nature of the collaboration cannot be expressed in the commit comment. Perhaps we could have a Thank-you: with free-form content in addition to a Contributed-by: with the latter reflecting a legal copyright author to keep the lawyers happy. Speaking of which -- hopefully jcheck will soon be open-sourced?! Martin > - Mark >
