[Zope-dev] Zope 4 release management

[Chris McDonough]

On Thu, 2012-02-02 at 08:46 +0100, Jens Vagelpohl wrote:
> Hi Chris,
> 
> > 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).
> 
> Yes, I remember "signing" the Repoze repository agreement in a similar way a few years ago. I liked it because it was convenient, sure. But as you say, I doubt it would hold up in a court.

IMO, neither would be likely to withstand an extremely well-funded court
challenge, because a well-funded legal team could probably convince a
judge to disallow distribution of the code for long enough that it would
effectively kill the project anyway.

- C