[ZF] Cleaning up the Zope Software Development Process

[Jim Fulton]

Tres Seaver wrote:
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> Jim Fulton wrote:

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>> - Resolving issues with the contributor agreement:
>>
>>    o It doesn't provide a needed mechanism for
>>      organizations, rather than individuals, to
>>      contribute.  This is a bug.
> 
> I'm not quite sure how organizations can contribute software:  an
> individual with an SSH key has to make the commit, right? 

The organization should be able to identify agents who access
the repository on their behalf, while retaining joint ownership
for the organization.  We have a situation where
a university is happy to contribute code but wants to retain
ownership.  The current committer agreement doesn't let them
do that.

 > Or are you
> thinking something along the lines of a "dontaion" of some large chunk
> of IP from an entity no longer vested in maintaining it?

Nope. (Although fixing the committer agreement would facilitate this too.)

>>    o It doesn't allow individuals to contribute without
>>      the formal approval of their employers. This is a pain
>>      but it is not clearly a bug.  There might be steps
>>      that we could take to make the process easier.
> 
> Without either that approval, or some kind of affadavit from the
> individual stating that their employment agreement / contract /
> situation does not impair their ability to contribute without it, I
> don't think you can accept the contribution.

Agreed.  I think what we might do is write a document
explaining the situation in non-scary terms to make it
easier for employees to get approval (or maybe even waste
less time failing to get approval. :))

>> These are important things to do but I need to limit
>> my scope to have any chance to accomplish anything.
>> Maybe someone else would like to take on some of these
>> other points.  For example, the renaming task is a purely
>> clerical one, I think.
>>
>> Of course there are other bugs in the documents that need to
>> be fixed too.
>>
>> If anyone disagrees with my approach, speak up, but also
>> be prepared to volunteer. :)
>>
>> If anyone wants to help me with this, let me know. :)
> 
> Overall, the approach seems fine.  I may be able to help a bit next week.

Great!

Jim

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