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Posted to dev@openoffice.apache.org by Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org> on 2011/08/07 18:30:40 UTC
An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
As mentioned before I'm concerned with the concentration of power on
the wiki, with a few moderators/admins having arbitrary power over
content, even though they have not signed the iCLA, are not committers
and have not been appointed by the PPMC. So there is arbitrary
authority, with no accountability. Having a system like this
abdicates the PPMC's responsibility for providing oversight to our
Apache-hosted project websites.
I posted a new FAQ on the wiki today. This was to demonstrate that
anyone could post anything on the wiki, under any license.
The post was quickly taken down and my account was permanently
blocked. This was done by someone who is not a PPMC member. In fact
this was a person who recently announced that he was leaving the
project because they had no time to participate. But evidently there
is no process for removing someone's super-user permissions once they
claim to have left the project. There was no discussion on the
ooo-dev or ooo-private about the content removal. Nor was there any
discussion of the account ban. It was just done.
This is not how Commit Then Review works at Apache. This proves my
point that we need to have all wiki users with permissions over other
users to be Committers. Only committers should have the ability to
revert content made by other committers. And this should only be done
with discussion.
-Rob
Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
Posted by TerryE <oo...@ellisons.org.uk>.
Rob,
> I agree with that sentiment. But I don't sense consensus on this yet.
> I get the impression that there are some who want to run an autonomous
> community project "within Apache" but not "part of Apache". Thanks
> for the hardware, now leave us alone ;-) This is all due to the
> "original sin" of this project, that the "community" did not decide to
> move to Apache. So there are various degrees of acceptance of the
> fact that it has moved, ranging from denial to acceptable, with all
> the stage in between. We need to get over it before we can get on
> with it.
>
I don't know who you are talking about, and the argument is irrelevant
to this thread. So please start a new one if you want to move off-topic.
Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
Posted by Rob Weir <ap...@robweir.com>.
On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 12:44 PM, Dave Fisher <da...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> On Aug 7, 2011, at 9:30 AM, Rob Weir wrote:
>
>> As mentioned before I'm concerned with the concentration of power on
>> the wiki, with a few moderators/admins having arbitrary power over
>> content, even though they have not signed the iCLA, are not committers
>> and have not been appointed by the PPMC. So there is arbitrary
>> authority, with no accountability. Having a system like this
>> abdicates the PPMC's responsibility for providing oversight to our
>> Apache-hosted project websites.
>>
>> I posted a new FAQ on the wiki today. This was to demonstrate that
>> anyone could post anything on the wiki, under any license.
>>
>> The post was quickly taken down and my account was permanently
>> blocked. This was done by someone who is not a PPMC member. In fact
>> this was a person who recently announced that he was leaving the
>> project because they had no time to participate. But evidently there
>> is no process for removing someone's super-user permissions once they
>> claim to have left the project. There was no discussion on the
>> ooo-dev or ooo-private about the content removal. Nor was there any
>> discussion of the account ban. It was just done.
>>
>> This is not how Commit Then Review works at Apache. This proves my
>> point that we need to have all wiki users with permissions over other
>> users to be Committers. Only committers should have the ability to
>> revert content made by other committers. And this should only be done
>> with discussion.
>
> Sure, we'll need to change the rules when we take over the MediaWiki. We will need to be assured that we only have PPMC members in the responsible positions. We will need contributors to understand that all new contributions are under new rules and the old contributions are either converted or problematic. We'll also need to a disclaimer about the wide variety of licenses possible.
>
I agree with that sentiment. But I don't sense consensus on this yet.
I get the impression that there are some who want to run an autonomous
community project "within Apache" but not "part of Apache". Thanks
for the hardware, now leave us alone ;-) This is all due to the
"original sin" of this project, that the "community" did not decide to
move to Apache. So there are various degrees of acceptance of the
fact that it has moved, ranging from denial to acceptable, with all
the stage in between. We need to get over it before we can get on
with it.
> I think there are some larger issues to think about than the wiki.
>
Any that are not already being discussed on the list?
> Regards,
> Dave
Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
Posted by Dave Fisher <da...@comcast.net>.
On Aug 7, 2011, at 9:30 AM, Rob Weir wrote:
> As mentioned before I'm concerned with the concentration of power on
> the wiki, with a few moderators/admins having arbitrary power over
> content, even though they have not signed the iCLA, are not committers
> and have not been appointed by the PPMC. So there is arbitrary
> authority, with no accountability. Having a system like this
> abdicates the PPMC's responsibility for providing oversight to our
> Apache-hosted project websites.
>
> I posted a new FAQ on the wiki today. This was to demonstrate that
> anyone could post anything on the wiki, under any license.
>
> The post was quickly taken down and my account was permanently
> blocked. This was done by someone who is not a PPMC member. In fact
> this was a person who recently announced that he was leaving the
> project because they had no time to participate. But evidently there
> is no process for removing someone's super-user permissions once they
> claim to have left the project. There was no discussion on the
> ooo-dev or ooo-private about the content removal. Nor was there any
> discussion of the account ban. It was just done.
>
> This is not how Commit Then Review works at Apache. This proves my
> point that we need to have all wiki users with permissions over other
> users to be Committers. Only committers should have the ability to
> revert content made by other committers. And this should only be done
> with discussion.
Sure, we'll need to change the rules when we take over the MediaWiki. We will need to be assured that we only have PPMC members in the responsible positions. We will need contributors to understand that all new contributions are under new rules and the old contributions are either converted or problematic. We'll also need to a disclaimer about the wide variety of licenses possible.
I think there are some larger issues to think about than the wiki.
Regards,
Dave
Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
Posted by Simon Phipps <si...@webmink.com>.
On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 5:30 PM, Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org> wrote:
> The post was quickly taken down and my account was permanently
> blocked.
>
Given the posting was clearly an abuse of edit privilege, it sounds like the
current MediaWiki instance is being operated correctly under its current
administration. If you had made a similar edit on Wikipedia, something very
similar would have happened. MediaWiki provides excellent tools to allow a
community to be self-policing without the need for many specially-authorised
roles or elaborate bureaucracy. I hope a future AOOo wiki will be just as
permissive and just as well policed by its (informally-constituted)
community.
S.
Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
Posted by Rob Weir <ap...@robweir.com>.
On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 1:11 PM, Michael Stahl <ms...@openoffice.org> wrote:
> On 07.08.2011 18:30, Rob Weir wrote:
>>
>> As mentioned before I'm concerned with the concentration of power on
>> the wiki, with a few moderators/admins having arbitrary power over
>> content, even though they have not signed the iCLA, are not committers
>> and have not been appointed by the PPMC. So there is arbitrary
>> authority, with no accountability. Having a system like this
>> abdicates the PPMC's responsibility for providing oversight to our
>> Apache-hosted project websites.
>>
>> I posted a new FAQ on the wiki today. This was to demonstrate that
>> anyone could post anything on the wiki, under any license.
>>
>> The post was quickly taken down and my account was permanently
>> blocked. This was done by someone who is not a PPMC member. In fact
>> this was a person who recently announced that he was leaving the
>> project because they had no time to participate. But evidently there
>> is no process for removing someone's super-user permissions once they
>> claim to have left the project. There was no discussion on the
>> ooo-dev or ooo-private about the content removal. Nor was there any
>> discussion of the account ban. It was just done.
>
> i can't figure out how to look at what exactly you added to the wiki, but if
> you really added a demand of payment in livestock to the page then i
> consider such handling of obvious attempts at vandalism entirely
> appropriate, and i am happy that we have somebody who looks after these
> things.
>
The contribution I made was original and was made under my copyright.
The contribution was entirely in conformance with the terms dictated
by the wiki page itself for contributions:
"You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it
from a public domain or similar free resource (see OpenOffice.org
Wiki:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without
permission!"
I did put additional restrictions on copying and translation of the
contribution. Many other contributions to the wiki have restrictions
on derived works, as dictated by their license. The fact that use in
derived works required payment in the form of livestock is not
relevant to whether the contribution should be immediately deleted,
without discussion or review, and the contributor's account blocked.
That is, unless we think that admins should be interpreting and
enforcing license policies that go beyond those stated on the wiki
itself.
>> This is not how Commit Then Review works at Apache. This proves my
>> point that we need to have all wiki users with permissions over other
>> users to be Committers. Only committers should have the ability to
>> revert content made by other committers. And this should only be done
>> with discussion.
>
> in general i'd agree that being a Committer is an advantage for
> administrative duties, but of course it depends on finding enough Committers
> with sufficient time available to react to Wiki vandalism and spam in a
> timely manner; in the current situation i'm happy that Clayton is still
> watching it a bit, and he certainly has the experience to do a good job.
>
> oh, and consider that currently the Wiki is still on Oracle/OOo
> infrastructure, not on Apache, so i guess if there really is a Committer
> requirement it does not currently apply.
>
That is a fair comment. But since the wiki will shortly be on Apache
infrastructure, it is not irrelevant or a wasted effort to discuss
these issues now.
>> -Rob
>
> regards,
> michael
>
>
Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
Posted by Michael Stahl <ms...@openoffice.org>.
On 07.08.2011 18:30, Rob Weir wrote:
> As mentioned before I'm concerned with the concentration of power on
> the wiki, with a few moderators/admins having arbitrary power over
> content, even though they have not signed the iCLA, are not committers
> and have not been appointed by the PPMC. So there is arbitrary
> authority, with no accountability. Having a system like this
> abdicates the PPMC's responsibility for providing oversight to our
> Apache-hosted project websites.
>
> I posted a new FAQ on the wiki today. This was to demonstrate that
> anyone could post anything on the wiki, under any license.
>
> The post was quickly taken down and my account was permanently
> blocked. This was done by someone who is not a PPMC member. In fact
> this was a person who recently announced that he was leaving the
> project because they had no time to participate. But evidently there
> is no process for removing someone's super-user permissions once they
> claim to have left the project. There was no discussion on the
> ooo-dev or ooo-private about the content removal. Nor was there any
> discussion of the account ban. It was just done.
i can't figure out how to look at what exactly you added to the wiki,
but if you really added a demand of payment in livestock to the page
then i consider such handling of obvious attempts at vandalism entirely
appropriate, and i am happy that we have somebody who looks after these
things.
> This is not how Commit Then Review works at Apache. This proves my
> point that we need to have all wiki users with permissions over other
> users to be Committers. Only committers should have the ability to
> revert content made by other committers. And this should only be done
> with discussion.
in general i'd agree that being a Committer is an advantage for
administrative duties, but of course it depends on finding enough
Committers with sufficient time available to react to Wiki vandalism and
spam in a timely manner; in the current situation i'm happy that Clayton
is still watching it a bit, and he certainly has the experience to do a
good job.
oh, and consider that currently the Wiki is still on Oracle/OOo
infrastructure, not on Apache, so i guess if there really is a Committer
requirement it does not currently apply.
> -Rob
regards,
michael
RE: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
Posted by "Dennis E. Hamilton" <or...@apache.org>.
Wait a minute. OpenOffice.org is not currently in our custody as far as I know.
Whoever curated you did so with the authority they have there, not here. We're getting ahead of ourselves. Clayton has the authority Clayton has at OpenOffice.org.
Ease up, please.
- Dennis
-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Weir [mailto:robweir@apache.org]
Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2011 09:31
To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
As mentioned before I'm concerned with the concentration of power on
the wiki, with a few moderators/admins having arbitrary power over
content, even though they have not signed the iCLA, are not committers
and have not been appointed by the PPMC. So there is arbitrary
authority, with no accountability. Having a system like this
abdicates the PPMC's responsibility for providing oversight to our
Apache-hosted project websites.
I posted a new FAQ on the wiki today. This was to demonstrate that
anyone could post anything on the wiki, under any license.
The post was quickly taken down and my account was permanently
blocked. This was done by someone who is not a PPMC member. In fact
this was a person who recently announced that he was leaving the
project because they had no time to participate. But evidently there
is no process for removing someone's super-user permissions once they
claim to have left the project. There was no discussion on the
ooo-dev or ooo-private about the content removal. Nor was there any
discussion of the account ban. It was just done.
This is not how Commit Then Review works at Apache. This proves my
point that we need to have all wiki users with permissions over other
users to be Committers. Only committers should have the ability to
revert content made by other committers. And this should only be done
with discussion.
-Rob
Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
Posted by Frank Peters <fp...@googlemail.com>.
Rob,
> As mentioned before I'm concerned with the concentration of power on
> the wiki, with a few moderators/admins having arbitrary power over
> content, even though they have not signed the iCLA, are not committers
> and have not been appointed by the PPMC. So there is arbitrary
> authority, with no accountability. Having a system like this
> abdicates the PPMC's responsibility for providing oversight to our
> Apache-hosted project websites.
>
> I posted a new FAQ on the wiki today. This was to demonstrate that
> anyone could post anything on the wiki, under any license.
>
> The post was quickly taken down and my account was permanently
> blocked. This was done by someone who is not a PPMC member. In fact
So obviously your demonstration failed. Thanks to Clayton who has served
a long time as a dedicated admin on the wiki and apparently is still
taking care that noone spams the wiki.
> this was a person who recently announced that he was leaving the
> project because they had no time to participate. But evidently there
> is no process for removing someone's super-user permissions once they
> claim to have left the project. There was no discussion on the
> ooo-dev or ooo-private about the content removal. Nor was there any
> discussion of the account ban. It was just done.
> This is not how Commit Then Review works at Apache. This proves my
So doesn't it? Why not start a discussion thread about every spammer
on the wiki? We have so few of them (threads).
The wiki as it is now is legacy. You have not been involved in
the history of the wiki in the last 5 years. Clayton has and has
(together with his co-admins) ensured that it 2was a useful source
of information for the community.
Go ahead and implement a wiki at Apache and move the content over.
This "demonstration" of yours was a pathetic move.
Frank
Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
Posted by Jean Hollis Weber <je...@gmail.com>.
On Sun, 2011-08-07 at 18:04 -0400, Rob Weir wrote:
> If you've been following the list discussions, in another thread, you
> should know that the wiki is already up, in a VM, on Apache hardware.
> Switching over to that as the live version will not be long.
Your comment wasn't made to me, but I want to point out that I haven't
been following the more technical discussions (or mutations of threads
that started out technical and still had the original subject line), so
I did not know that. I'm sure I'm not the only person on this list who
doesn't read all the technical threads.
--Jean
Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
Posted by Andy Brown <an...@the-martin-byrd.net>.
Joe Schaefer wrote:
> All: stop talking on this thread. This juvenile conversation
> needs to end, and we need to get back to making progress on
> both the service migration and the source code repository.
>
> Re service migration: the people who currently admin the existing
> wiki would be welcome to continue in that role at the ASF. Anyone
> who has enough common sense to remove stupid crap on the wiki would
> be welcome to help admin one at the ASF. No it's not fun being called
> out for taking obviously justified action, and that situation won't
> change at the ASF other than the fact that your peers in infra will
> likely support you.
>
>
> Re source code repository: apparently noone on the face of the Earth
> has the requisite skillset to migrate the history back to svn. Fortunately
> that's not a fatal situation as you can simply migrate the tip to svn
> now and migrate everything back to git in a year or so once it's made
> available to incubating projects (or graduate and it'll probably be
> available by that time).
>
>
> Let's end this thread and move on to the issues I've mentioned. Rational
> discussions about the ICLA policy and its impact on releasable artifacts
> can be handled separately.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Rob Weir<ap...@robweir.com>
>> To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
>> Cc:
>> Sent: Sunday, August 7, 2011 6:04 PM
>> Subject: Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 3:43 PM, Larry Gusaas<la...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> On 2011/08/07 11:16 AM Rob Weir wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I think we need to do far better than what was just done, when a
>>>> non-project member, one who just recently announced that they were
>>>> leaving the project, deleted a contribution from a committer, and then
>>>> banned the committer from the wiki. That shows multiple levels of
>>>> problems, security and procedural.
>>>
>>> The wiki is not part of this project. Apache has no control over that wiki
>>> yet. It is still under Oracle.
>>>
>>
>> If you've been following the list discussions, in another thread, you
>> should know that the wiki is already up, in a VM, on Apache hardware.
>> Switching over to that as the live version will not be long. It
>> certainly is not too early to discuss how we want it to work at
>> Apache. This should be done with eyes wide open, recognizing what
>> workdc well with the current wiki, but also acknowledging what didn't
>> work so well
>>
>>> Your being a committer has nothing to do with the current wiki. You are
>> just
>>> being ingenious to reinforce your anti user community wiki bias.
>>>
>>
>> Like most things, this is a question of balance more than of
>> absolutes. The balance for a community-led open source project under a
>> permissive license that allows downstream consumers to customize and
>> release their own commercial derivative applications will likely be
>> different than the ideal balance for a corporate-led open source
>> project under a copyleft license designed to discourage commercial
>> derivatives. It is important to acknowledge this difference, and
>> then appreciate the what these differences mean for the project.. A
>> key part of being friendly for commercial consumers is that we treat
>> the license questions far more rigorously than the lax approach taken
>> previously. If this is seen as "anti-community" then we need to do a
>> better job explaining the reasons for this.
>>
>>> Larry
>>> --
+1
Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
Posted by Joe Schaefer <jo...@yahoo.com>.
All: stop talking on this thread. This juvenile conversation
needs to end, and we need to get back to making progress on
both the service migration and the source code repository.
Re service migration: the people who currently admin the existing
wiki would be welcome to continue in that role at the ASF. Anyone
who has enough common sense to remove stupid crap on the wiki would
be welcome to help admin one at the ASF. No it's not fun being called
out for taking obviously justified action, and that situation won't
change at the ASF other than the fact that your peers in infra will
likely support you.
Re source code repository: apparently noone on the face of the Earth
has the requisite skillset to migrate the history back to svn. Fortunately
that's not a fatal situation as you can simply migrate the tip to svn
now and migrate everything back to git in a year or so once it's made
available to incubating projects (or graduate and it'll probably be
available by that time).
Let's end this thread and move on to the issues I've mentioned. Rational
discussions about the ICLA policy and its impact on releasable artifacts
can be handled separately.
----- Original Message -----
> From: Rob Weir <ap...@robweir.com>
> To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
> Cc:
> Sent: Sunday, August 7, 2011 6:04 PM
> Subject: Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
>
> On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 3:43 PM, Larry Gusaas <la...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> On 2011/08/07 11:16 AM Rob Weir wrote:
>>>
>>> I think we need to do far better than what was just done, when a
>>> non-project member, one who just recently announced that they were
>>> leaving the project, deleted a contribution from a committer, and then
>>> banned the committer from the wiki. That shows multiple levels of
>>> problems, security and procedural.
>>
>> The wiki is not part of this project. Apache has no control over that wiki
>> yet. It is still under Oracle.
>>
>
> If you've been following the list discussions, in another thread, you
> should know that the wiki is already up, in a VM, on Apache hardware.
> Switching over to that as the live version will not be long. It
> certainly is not too early to discuss how we want it to work at
> Apache. This should be done with eyes wide open, recognizing what
> workdc well with the current wiki, but also acknowledging what didn't
> work so well
>
>> Your being a committer has nothing to do with the current wiki. You are
> just
>> being ingenious to reinforce your anti user community wiki bias.
>>
>
> Like most things, this is a question of balance more than of
> absolutes. The balance for a community-led open source project under a
> permissive license that allows downstream consumers to customize and
> release their own commercial derivative applications will likely be
> different than the ideal balance for a corporate-led open source
> project under a copyleft license designed to discourage commercial
> derivatives. It is important to acknowledge this difference, and
> then appreciate the what these differences mean for the project.. A
> key part of being friendly for commercial consumers is that we treat
> the license questions far more rigorously than the lax approach taken
> previously. If this is seen as "anti-community" then we need to do a
> better job explaining the reasons for this.
>
>> Larry
>> --
>> _________________________________
>> Larry I. Gusaas
>> Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan Canada
>> Website: http://larry-gusaas.com
>> "An artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind
>> theirs." - Edgard Varese
>>
>>
>>
>
Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
Posted by Rob Weir <ap...@robweir.com>.
On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 3:43 PM, Larry Gusaas <la...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2011/08/07 11:16 AM Rob Weir wrote:
>>
>> I think we need to do far better than what was just done, when a
>> non-project member, one who just recently announced that they were
>> leaving the project, deleted a contribution from a committer, and then
>> banned the committer from the wiki. That shows multiple levels of
>> problems, security and procedural.
>
> The wiki is not part of this project. Apache has no control over that wiki
> yet. It is still under Oracle.
>
If you've been following the list discussions, in another thread, you
should know that the wiki is already up, in a VM, on Apache hardware.
Switching over to that as the live version will not be long. It
certainly is not too early to discuss how we want it to work at
Apache. This should be done with eyes wide open, recognizing what
workdc well with the current wiki, but also acknowledging what didn't
work so well
> Your being a committer has nothing to do with the current wiki. You are just
> being ingenious to reinforce your anti user community wiki bias.
>
Like most things, this is a question of balance more than of
absolutes. The balance for a community-led open source project under a
permissive license that allows downstream consumers to customize and
release their own commercial derivative applications will likely be
different than the ideal balance for a corporate-led open source
project under a copyleft license designed to discourage commercial
derivatives. It is important to acknowledge this difference, and
then appreciate the what these differences mean for the project.. A
key part of being friendly for commercial consumers is that we treat
the license questions far more rigorously than the lax approach taken
previously. If this is seen as "anti-community" then we need to do a
better job explaining the reasons for this.
> Larry
> --
> _________________________________
> Larry I. Gusaas
> Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan Canada
> Website: http://larry-gusaas.com
> "An artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind
> theirs." - Edgard Varese
>
>
>
Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
Posted by Larry Gusaas <la...@gmail.com>.
On 2011/08/07 11:16 AM Rob Weir wrote:
> I think we need to do far better than what was just done, when a
> non-project member, one who just recently announced that they were
> leaving the project, deleted a contribution from a committer, and then
> banned the committer from the wiki. That shows multiple levels of
> problems, security and procedural.
The wiki is not part of this project. Apache has no control over that wiki yet. It is still
under Oracle.
Your being a committer has nothing to do with the current wiki. You are just being ingenious to
reinforce your anti user community wiki bias.
Larry
--
_________________________________
Larry I. Gusaas
Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan Canada
Website: http://larry-gusaas.com
"An artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind theirs." - Edgard Varese
Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
Posted by Rob Weir <ap...@robweir.com>.
On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 2:46 PM, Eike Rathke <oo...@erack.de> wrote:
> Hi Rob,
>
> On Sunday, 2011-08-07 13:16:33 -0400, Rob Weir wrote:
>
>> > So basically you tried to troll the wiki to prove a point:
>> >
>> > If your edit stay in place you claim that there is a problem...
>> > if your edit are taken down, you claim there is a problem...
>> >
>> > Damn if you do, damn if you don't.... implacable logic.
>> >
>>
>> It is called reductio ad absurdum. This is a form of logic. I
>> demonstrated that the inconsistencies that exist in the way the wiki
>> is run today lead to contradictions. I'd like us to move to system
>> for managing the wiki where these problems don't exist.
>
> Where do you see such problems would end? After challenge/response
> verification of the email address given? Helps against spammers, but who
> really wanted to abuse the wiki would pass also that. Upload of an
> OpenPGP key with trust at least in the 5th level? Apache committers
> only? The more barriers you put in, the less community you'll get.
>
>
In general I see it like this (and mind that IANAL):
A license is the terms that a rights owner gives to content that they
control of the rights to. So there are four facts of interest:
1) The identify of the rights owner
2) The identity of the person granting the license
3) The person physically contributing the content
4) The identity of the work
In the the majority of cases, 1-3 is the same person. But for works
for hire, 1-2 might be a corporation, and 3 might be an employee.
When you upload content that is under a compatible license, then 1-2
would be the original author and 3 would be the person uploading it to
Apache.
The edge cases, quite rare, but still important from the risk
perspective, are the case where someone uploads content that they do
not own and for which they have no rights to upload it. In that case
there is no license; the rights owner did not consent.
As you can easily see, it is far easier to establish some of these
facts than others. For example, identifying the work is trivial. It
is revision in SVN, or a message id of the patch, or a bugzilla ID, or
a wiki revision. That is easy.
Identifying the person contributing the content can be done with
various degrees of accuracy, from IP address, email address, to
assertions made at login, to a signed and returned iCLA.
Note that in general you cannot identify the original rights owner
independently of the assertions made by the person contributing the
content. That is why knowing their identity is important.
The greater the certainty with which you can identify the contributor,
and that they understand and agree with their obligations to upload
only works that they have the right to upload, the less risk there is
to users and downstream consumers of our deliverables. Asking less
of our contributors is to transfer the risk from the person who knows
most about whether they have sufficient rights, to a downstream
consumers who knows nothing of this.
This is why the iCLA is so important. It identifies the contributor.
Their real name and contact information and signature is recorded by
Apache. It also represents an agreement by the contributor that they
will not contribute content that they do not have rights to. It is
the due diligence that we do to ensure that the product that the
project delivers has a clean pedigree, that our users and downstream
consumers can use it safely. Yes, I know there are no absolutes. But
having the iCLA makes it safer than not having it.
Is the iCLA too much of a burden for an author? As mentioned before
it is no more a burden than the copyright assignment form that an
author would sign when submitting an article to a magazine for
publication. But yes it is more of a burden than not having it. But
I think we should make the effort to explain to contributors why the
iCLA is important and what the benefits are. We'll always have the
ability to accept small changes and patches, even without the iCLA.
But where the contribution amounts to something larger, for example
entire multiple-page works, then I think we need to pay more
consideration to the license.
-Rob
Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
Posted by Eike Rathke <oo...@erack.de>.
Hi Rob,
On Sunday, 2011-08-07 13:16:33 -0400, Rob Weir wrote:
> > So basically you tried to troll the wiki to prove a point:
> >
> > If your edit stay in place you claim that there is a problem...
> > if your edit are taken down, you claim there is a problem...
> >
> > Damn if you do, damn if you don't.... implacable logic.
> >
>
> It is called reductio ad absurdum. This is a form of logic. I
> demonstrated that the inconsistencies that exist in the way the wiki
> is run today lead to contradictions. I'd like us to move to system
> for managing the wiki where these problems don't exist.
Where do you see such problems would end? After challenge/response
verification of the email address given? Helps against spammers, but who
really wanted to abuse the wiki would pass also that. Upload of an
OpenPGP key with trust at least in the 5th level? Apache committers
only? The more barriers you put in, the less community you'll get.
> >> There was no discussion on the
> >> ooo-dev or ooo-private about the content removal
> >
> > Do you suggest that every wiki reversal of 'Vandalism' (I mean, you
> > created a User named FooBar... you might as well have chosen
> > SuperTroll2000....)
> > be subject do a Discussion on a mailing list... ?
> >
>
> I think we need to do far better than what was just done, when a
> non-project member,
Others already pointed out that the existing OOo wiki is not part of the
AOOo project yet.
> one who just recently announced that they were
> leaving the project, deleted a contribution from a committer, and then
> banned the committer from the wiki. That shows multiple levels of
> problems, security and procedural.
In
Message-ID: <CA...@mail.gmail.com>
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-ooo-dev/201108.mbox/%3CCAOVv=gNi=qvxvrSz6nwgeLFivAGPWHD8G67VdDNugR+6Bjg-=g@mail.gmail.com%3E
he also said
| I will be available behind the scenes for a while to support
| the OOoWiki transition, and any other OOo projects I've had my fingers
| in over the past five years.
so deleting that content somewhat helped the transition in that one
problematic page less will have to be transitioned.
Eike
--
PGP/OpenPGP/GnuPG encrypted mail preferred in all private communication.
Key ID: 0x293C05FD - 997A 4C60 CE41 0149 0DB3 9E96 2F1A D073 293C 05FD
Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
Posted by Rob Weir <ap...@robweir.com>.
On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Norbert Thiebaud <nt...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 11:30 AM, Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org> wrote:
>> As mentioned before I'm concerned with the concentration of power on
>> the wiki, with a few moderators/admins having arbitrary power over
>> content, even though they have not signed the iCLA, are not committers
>> and have not been appointed by the PPMC. So there is arbitrary
>> authority, with no accountability. Having a system like this
>> abdicates the PPMC's responsibility for providing oversight to our
>> Apache-hosted project websites.
>>
>> I posted a new FAQ on the wiki today. This was to demonstrate that
>> anyone could post anything on the wiki, under any license.
>>
>> The post was quickly taken down and my account was permanently
>> blocked.
>
> You are talking about:
> # (Block log); 15:45 . . Ccornell (Talk | contribs) blocked Foobar
> (Talk | contribs) with an expiry time of infinite (account creation
> disabled, autoblock disabled) (Inserting nonsense/gibberish into
> pages: Creating nonsesne content not realted to OOo Account banned.)
> # (Deletion log); 15:44 . . Ccornell (Talk | contribs) deleted
> "Documentation/FAQ/General/What is a good rhyme about OpenOffice?"
> (Vandalism: content was: '{{DISPLAYTITLE: What is a good rhyme about
> OpenOffice.org?}} <section begin=question/> What is a good rhyme about
> OpenOffice.org? <section end=question/> <section…' (and the only
> contributor was '[[Special:Contributions/Fo)
>
> right?
>
> So basically you tried to troll the wiki to prove a point:
>
> If your edit stay in place you claim that there is a problem...
> if your edit are taken down, you claim there is a problem...
>
> Damn if you do, damn if you don't.... implacable logic.
>
It is called reductio ad absurdum. This is a form of logic. I
demonstrated that the inconsistencies that exist in the way the wiki
is run today lead to contradictions. I'd like us to move to system
for managing the wiki where these problems don't exist.
>> There was no discussion on the
>> ooo-dev or ooo-private about the content removal
>
> Do you suggest that every wiki reversal of 'Vandalism' (I mean, you
> created a User named FooBar... you might as well have chosen
> SuperTroll2000....)
> be subject do a Discussion on a mailing list... ?
>
I think we need to do far better than what was just done, when a
non-project member, one who just recently announced that they were
leaving the project, deleted a contribution from a committer, and then
banned the committer from the wiki. That shows multiple levels of
problems, security and procedural.
> Norbert
>
Re: An example of what's wrong up with the wiki
Posted by Norbert Thiebaud <nt...@gmail.com>.
On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 11:30 AM, Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org> wrote:
> As mentioned before I'm concerned with the concentration of power on
> the wiki, with a few moderators/admins having arbitrary power over
> content, even though they have not signed the iCLA, are not committers
> and have not been appointed by the PPMC. So there is arbitrary
> authority, with no accountability. Having a system like this
> abdicates the PPMC's responsibility for providing oversight to our
> Apache-hosted project websites.
>
> I posted a new FAQ on the wiki today. This was to demonstrate that
> anyone could post anything on the wiki, under any license.
>
> The post was quickly taken down and my account was permanently
> blocked.
You are talking about:
# (Block log); 15:45 . . Ccornell (Talk | contribs) blocked Foobar
(Talk | contribs) with an expiry time of infinite (account creation
disabled, autoblock disabled) (Inserting nonsense/gibberish into
pages: Creating nonsesne content not realted to OOo Account banned.)
# (Deletion log); 15:44 . . Ccornell (Talk | contribs) deleted
"Documentation/FAQ/General/What is a good rhyme about OpenOffice?"
(Vandalism: content was: '{{DISPLAYTITLE: What is a good rhyme about
OpenOffice.org?}} <section begin=question/> What is a good rhyme about
OpenOffice.org? <section end=question/> <section…' (and the only
contributor was '[[Special:Contributions/Fo)
right?
So basically you tried to troll the wiki to prove a point:
If your edit stay in place you claim that there is a problem...
if your edit are taken down, you claim there is a problem...
Damn if you do, damn if you don't.... implacable logic.
> There was no discussion on the
> ooo-dev or ooo-private about the content removal
Do you suggest that every wiki reversal of 'Vandalism' (I mean, you
created a User named FooBar... you might as well have chosen
SuperTroll2000....)
be subject do a Discussion on a mailing list... ?
Norbert