[Lucene.Net] Re: Luke.Net

[Troy Howard <th...@gmail.com>]

Stefan,

As a general question about process around accepting software
contributions, one thing I'm a little confused about: How does
accepting this contribution differ from a normal contribution? By that
I mean, suppose a developer contributed a significant patch to our
code, through the normal process or attaching a patch to a JIRA
ticket. My understanding is that they don't need to sign a CLA or
other legal paperwork to do that, as long as the committers who
ultimately apply the patch have those on file.

What are the criteria that determine when something needs additional
legal paperwork (like a grant/contributor CLA/etc)?

Thanks,
Troy


On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 10:45 PM, Stefan Bodewig <bo...@apache.org> wrote:
> On 2011-02-18, Troy Howard wrote:
>
>> Pending resolution of the legal issues around ingesting the code into
>> Lucene.Net,
>
> All it takes is:
>
> * attach the code to a JIRA ticket.
>
> * have software grants signed by all contributors to the original code
>  base.
>
> * write a single page for the Incubator site
>
> * start a vote on Incubator general and wait for 72 hours.
>
> I've done this several times and it's not as painful as one might think.
>
> Stefan
>

Re: [Lucene.Net] Re: Luke.Net

[Stefan Bodewig <bo...@apache.org>]

On 2011-02-21, Troy Howard wrote:

> As a general question about process around accepting software
> contributions, one thing I'm a little confused about: How does
> accepting this contribution differ from a normal contribution?

Not much.

> By that I mean, suppose a developer contributed a significant patch to
> our code, through the normal process or attaching a patch to a JIRA
> ticket. My understanding is that they don't need to sign a CLA or
> other legal paperwork to do that, as long as the committers who
> ultimately apply the patch have those on file.

As long as they have checked the checkbox that says "yes, you may use
it".

> What are the criteria that determine when something needs additional
> legal paperwork (like a grant/contributor CLA/etc)?

This is some sort of gray area.  There are certain cases where the
answer is easy.  If we talk about a few lines of patch then we don't
need a CLA, if it is a big existing project with several contributors we
need CLAs or SGAs.  For anything in between it is a judgement call.

In Luke.NET's case we have at least two people who've worked on the code
base.  Even if Aaron attached the code to a JIRA ticket and checked the
"this is a contribution" checkbox that could not cover the work of his
collegue.

Stefan