Re: OFBiz-Sandbox approved on SourceForge.net

[David E Jones]

On Jan 5, 2007, at 12:43 PM, Chris Howe wrote:

Hey David (others),

I want to avoid being in a potentially
similar situation that Ofbiz was  in prior
to Apache incubation.

Who owns the code that people contribute via svn?
(rhetorical question follows) Prior to Apache
Incubation was Open for Business a legal entity that
could accept ownership?  If it wasn't, I find myself
in a similar situation in that ofbiz-sandbox isn't a
legal entity.  As far as my contributions that are
OFBiz related, I don't care how others use it as long
as it doesn't prevent me from using it.  How can I
ensure that others who post to the sandbox svn are
making their commits in a similar manner?

The owner of the copyright continues to own the copyright. The Apache 2.0 license explains fairly explicitly that only a license is granted from the copyright owner to the ASF, and then from the ASF to any users of the software. How you do this in a sandbox like you're shooting for... I really don't know! I think that's one reason the ASF sandbox is limited to committers only with CLAs on file. However, having a CLA on file with a separate organization doesn't really much for the ASF.

Since solutions provided in the sandbox have a
potential to being applicable to the Apache Ofbiz
project, what can be done ahead of time to ensure that
someone has the ability to create a patch based on
sandbox code, upload it to Apache OFBiz's JIRA and
legally be able to click the "Grant license to ASF for
inclusion in ASF works" radio button?  Because the
intention of the sandbox is to facilitate
collaboration, it's likely the person creating the
patch doesn't own the code he's submitting in it's
entirety.

I want the sandbox to supplement Apache Ofbiz's
efforts and make it easier to develop solutions.  I
don't want contributions to have legal ramifications
because of who owned the contribution when it was all
in the spirit of open source.

This issue isn't unique to the sandbox either.  Unless
Tim and the others that contributed for the shopping
cart improvement are all employees of Hotwax and Tim
was contributing patches as a function of Hotwax's
operations, they face a similar legal question.  Anil
and Ashish would have potential for legal recourse
later even if they don't voice objections today and
even if they have iCLAs on file with the ASF as they
weren't the donors of their work.  I'm not saying it's
a valid argument, but does at least pass the standard
for a nuisance one.  And if your 25 years or older in
the United States, chances are you already understand
the costs of a nuisance lawsuit.

-David

At Hotwax we address this explicitly in our sub-contractor and client agreements to make sure we can contribute things back to the open source project. This is an issue that Andy and I have been working with for years and be careful about in our contracts and such. Just be careful of doing things on a "work for hire" basis because then whoever is paying you owns the copyright and they have to contribute it to OFBiz because you don't own the copyright so you can't license it (unless you have an adequate license from them to be able to sub-license it to the ASF...).

Thanks for your feedback or if you can point me to
someone in the ASF who can give me a more definitive
answer.

Regards,
Chris


--- David E Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

On Jan 4, 2007, at 4:43 PM, Chris Howe wrote:

For those of you interested, a project for a

sandbox

has been approved on sourceforge.net
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/ofbiz-sandbox/).

The

goal is to provide an area that you can

collaborate on

ideas for implementations based on Apache Open for
Business.  These collaborations can be from simple
feature improvements, to showcasing a particular
change, to complete components, to a half-baked

idea

that you want to get the gist out to and let

someone

with some more skills or time help work on.

Please understand that this is currently (and
depending on Apache OFBiz's interest in this side
project, perhaps permanently), completely outside

of

the Apache Ofbiz project and has no relation to

the

ASF other than simply being geeked about the

current

and future Apache Open for Business project.  Code
that gets added to the ofbiz-sandbox may never

make it

into the Apache OFBiz project.  I have no control

over

such matters.

Thanks for clarifying this distinction. My
experience with the ASF is
still somewhat limited, but form what I know so far
this sort of
thing is for the most part discouraged at the ASF.
There is an
informal "project" that is like a sandbox for ASF
committers only
that is meant to be a pre-incubator type of thing to
explore
different things and facilitate collaboration in
those.

Just because it's unofficial, there's certainly no
problem with this
from the OFBiz perspective, and we could probably
even find a place
for a link to on the OFBiz site or at least on
Confluence. It is the
intent of OFBiz that anyone can build whatever they
want on top of
it, and if you're interested in facilitating this,
go for it!

There is no level of quality necessary to

contribute.

Just do your best not to wreck someone else's
progress.

I think the goal of anyone who would be

contributing

any time or code to the ofbiz-sandbox is doing so

in

the spirit of open source so that others can

benefit

from a solution they've discovered.  Therefore to
prevent any potential roadblocks in Apache Ofbiz
adopting solutions formed in the sandbox, all
contributed code will be under the Apache 2.0

license

and I suppose donated to the ASF.  If anyone knows
what I need to do to ensure a roadblock isn't

created,

please let me know (collect iCLA's from potential
committers, ensure Apache already has an iCLA for

the

potential committer ??)  As soon as I get that
question answered, I'll start adding people who

want

to be added to the svn commit access on the sf.net
site.

Before the code touches the OFBiz code base it
doesn't matter, you
can do manage things however you want. I wouldn't
worry about CLAs
until code starts moving to OFBiz, and even then if
it doesn't have
to go through incubation CLAs won't be needed
anyway.

Still, if there are large blocks of code developed
by a bunch of
different people the licensing issues get trickier
and such things
_may_ have to go through incubation to get into the
OFBiz code
base... When you have a bunch of fingers in a pot
things do get
trickier...

Personally, I would prefer to use these mailing

lists

for discussion of things in the sandbox (to

encourage

talk from more people), but if that is or becomes

a

hassle for the Apache OFBiz project, just say the

word

and I'll maintain a list or two off of the sf.net
site.

I don't think this is the best of ideas... If it
relates to the
development of OFBiz itself, please use the ofbiz
dev mailing list.
If it relates to the use of OFBiz itself, please use
the ofbiz user
mailing list. If it relates to the development of
something that is
_not_ OFBiz and it isn't a question or discussion
about how to use
OFBiz, using separate mailing lists would be much
better. Not doing
so could (will...) be very confusing, especially to
people who are
not up to date on all of the happenings around here.
Even now I'm not
comfortable sometimes with the level of opentaps
discussion on the
ofbiz mailing lists, but I suppose that is a natural
consequence of
the way things are structured in that project (not
that anything that
is bad or whatever), and hopefully we'll be able to
distinguish
things more clearly from the OFBiz side in the
future (and hopefully
Si will continue the same thing on the opentaps/OSS
side).

-David

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