Hi, We've gotten some requests from core reviewers to automate verification that people submitting changes have agreed to the CLA. Right now, the expectation is that core reviewers will only approve changes submitted by people who have agreed. That's silly because we have computers that can do that.
Gerrit has a CLA system built in. While we could use it to replace the data collection and signature portion of the CLA process, that isn't the most important thing for either us or the lawyers to be working on right now. Instead, we can adopt a hybrid approach where we still use the same signature process, but use Gerrit to make sure people have completed it. The current process involves people adding their Launchpad IDs and Echosign signature transaction codes to a wiki page. To that, we'll add the step of requesting membership in the "openstack-cla" group on Launchpad. When someone has verified the listing for that person on the wiki page, they will be added to the group. Membership in that group will be required to upload changes to Gerrit. If we implement this technically as a CLA in Gerrit, albeit one that simply says something like "Follow the CLA process described in the wiki," we get a couple of benefits. We can tell Gerrit that anyone in a specific group (openstack-cla) has signed that CLA, and they will be able to upload changes. If someone attempts to upload a change without being a member of that group (ie, without having signed the CLA), they will receive a helpful error message: ====================================================================== fatal: A Contributor Agreement must be completed before uploading: https://review.openstack.org/#settings,agreements ====================================================================== That page (which will be present once the CLA is enabled) will show the pseudo-CLA in Gerrit, with a pointer to the wiki page with instructions on the real OpenStack CLA process. Even though it's not the way the Gerrit CLA system was intended to be used, I think this is a reasonable hybrid approach, at least until the next time we feel like overhauling the project CLA process. It's fairly simple, and we get an expressive error message from Gerrit if someone hasn't signed. In short, the process for new developers will be: 1) Sign CLA via Echosign 2) Record signature in wiki 3) Apply for membership in openstack-cla 4) Contribute! With only step 3 being added by this change. I'd like to enable this check on Thursday, January 5th. Please make sure you have signed the CLA and entered your name on the wiki page by then: http://wiki.openstack.org/HowToContribute http://wiki.openstack.org/Contributors -Jim _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~openstack Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~openstack More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
