[Zope-dev] Zope 4 release management

[Chris McDonough]

On Wed, 2012-02-01 at 16:29 +0100, Jens Vagelpohl wrote:
> On Feb 1, 2012, at 15:53 , Charlie Clark wrote:
> > Currently the hurdle to getting involved is signing and sending the committer agreement. A hurdle which I think is worth keeping. 
> 
> For any code released under the Zope Foundation umbrella that hurdle cannot be removed, anyway. 
> 
> To be frank, I don't even think that's a hurdle. And it helps to remind the signer that there are legal requirements and responsibilities involved.

For what it's worth, in the Pylons Project, we decided to continue
requiring the signing of a contributor's agreement (more or less the
same contributor agreement as Zope requires).  But instead of signing
via paper, we ask that folks "sign" the contributor agreement by adding
their name and date to a CONTRIBUTORS.txt file in a git fork of each
repository they wish to commit to (e.g.
https://github.com/Pylons/pyramid/blob/master/CONTRIBUTORS.txt).  The
CONTRIBUTORS.txt *is* the agreement, and the pull request serves as
proof that they agree to the contribution terms it outlines.

I'm not 100% confident that this will serve as watertight proof of
agreement in a well-funded court challenge.  But it's a lot easier on
the contributor and on the organization.  The contributor doesn't need
to use a fax or lick a stamp and wait, and at least if they're checked
in they're fairly durable and have lots of backups (it would be very
impressive if the ZF would be able to produce all the paper contributor
agreements that have been signed over the course of Zope's existence on
demand).

- C