[Python-Dev] Introducing Electronic Contributor Agreements

[Terry Reedy]

On 3/4/2013 3:46 PM, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> On Mon, 04 Mar 2013 15:46:48 -0500
> Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
>> On 3/4/2013 11:36 AM, Brett Cannon wrote:

>>> With this in place I would like to propose that all patches submitted to
>>> bugs.python.org <http://bugs.python.org> must come from someone who has
>>> signed the CLA before we consider committing it (if you want to be truly
>>> paranoid we could say that we won't even look at the code w/o a CLA).

While I regard CLAs as partly being a form of legal theater, I regard 
our participation as necessary, both to make explicit to contributors 
what should be implicit in the act of submission *and* to show to 
copyright holders a good-faith effort to not improperly incorporate 
their code.

Note: no one expected the Linux copyright challenge, nor our European 
trademark challenge, but they happened. I expect there will be more 
challenges to open source projects, perhaps some legitimate as the 
number of contributors increases.

>> Either policy could be facilitated by tracker changes. In order to see
>> the file upload box, one must login and the tracker knows who has a CLA
>> on file (as indicated by a * suffix on the name). If a file is uploaded
>> by someone without, a box could popup with the link to the e-form and a
>> message that a CLA is required.
>
> And how about people who upload something else than a patch?

Limit the popup to files with .diff or .patch extension. Reviewers can 
check for '*' for the occasionally patch lacking that.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy