On 11/6/06, Henri Yandell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 11/6/06, Mike Kienenberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 11/6/06, Henri Yandell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On 11/6/06, Mike Kienenberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > On 11/6/06, Henri Yandell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > > I'm still confused - why do we allow people to upload attachments that
> > > > are not intended for inclusion?
> > > >
> > > > I can see one very reasonable reason from a user point of view - the
> > > > example they want to upload is business related and so they want to do
> > > > their best to explain the problem to us, but not to have us publish
> > > > those details any further. However that reason doesn't hold up as it's
> > > > public if it's in our JIRA and if we don't know the license on it,
> > > > then can we even use it to resolve the issue?
> > > >
> > > > What makes an attachment special? Why don't we have to do this for
> > > > comments and the jira issue itself?
> > > >
> > > > Not seeing why we don't just say: "All issues + attachments are
> > > > intended for inclusion".
> > >
> > > There's a difference between "I don't want to contribute this code to
> > > the project code base" versus "I don't want my code published."
> > >
> > > The "no" option means the code is not for inclusion into the project.
> > > It doesn't necessarily mean that the code is confidential.
> >
> > What does 'not for inclusion' mean though?
> >
> > If it's marked that way, can I take bits of the code out of it? Do I
> > have to worry about looking at that code and then implementing
> > something in the apache code that does the same thing and getting
> > sued?
> >
> > For example, what if someone posts a bit of Sun's Java source to the
> > Harmony JIRA and marks it 'not for inclusion'. There's a world of
> > meaning in that not for inclusion flag. What's in it for the ASF to
> > have a not for inclusion option?
> >
> > I'm not seeing why we allow it - better to say "Anything here is for
> > inclusion".
>
> As you mentioned before, it's typically used to post example code
> demonstrating a bug. As a project committer, what's in it for me is
> that I can use the submitted code to identify and fix the bug. The
> code doesn't have to be apache licensed for me to do that (ASF
> licensing isn't viral). There's still benefit to the project simply
> in identifying and fixing bugs even without a code grant to the ASF.
How do you know you can use the code to identify and fix the bug?
And more confusingly - how do you write a unit test for that bug
without taking too much copyright from the example code?
Legal-wise (and my understanding of this stuff is always iffy) - I
thought that if something wasn't licensed/publically announced in the
public domain, that it was 'All Rights Reserved'. So anything that
doesn't check the 'code-grant' checkbox seems completely unusable.
I'm certainly no expert on this, but I'd say if someone opens a bug
report and attaches code to it saying that this is an example
reproducing the bug, then they've given you the rights to use it to
identify and fix the bug. In all cases we're assuming the person
posting the code has the right to grant usage since any other case is
invalid no matter how they check the box.
Writing a unit tests using their code as a template is separate issue
which I won't try to address (not qualified).
Code grant serves another purpose -- it's for explicitly saying "I
want you to include my code in the project code, and I give you full
rights to do so".
From a more ASF-selfish point of view - what are we losing if we don't
allow people to put stuff in without granting us the right to use
that? Are we going to see lots of people not attaching patches/test
code?
It's going to depend on the people, but in general, yes. It's hard
to get people to attach test code. It's harder still if you expect
them to independently write a test case for which ASF will get a
code-grant. If you're only interested in fixing problems for people
who have time to make code-grant test cases instead of snippets of
work they are probably doing for-hire, you're going to lose a lot of
potential contributions. Some projects may find that acceptable, but
unless there's a legal reason why it cannot be allowed, why make the
process any more difficult? In my experience, it's rare that such a
posted example is useful (even for test cases) outside of identifying
the bug in the first place unless the reporter already wrote a
standalone (and thus grantable) test case. And in those cases, ask
the reporter to check the code grant button.
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