For those not on the planning council. Official notes
from the last meeting and some comments from Mike on the IP policy discussion.
Most importantly: if you like the suggestion for a shadow
repository for IP stuck in the due diligence process, you MUST let your Board
representative know.
From: eclipse.org-planning-council-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:eclipse.org-planning-council-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mike
Milinkovich
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2006 11:03 AM
To: 'eclipse.org-planning-council'
Cc: 'Janet Campbell'
Subject: [eclipse.org-planning-council] RE: Comments from the
PlanningCouncil on the IP Process
Bjorn,
Thanks for passing these along. Comments inlined below.
I would like to preface my comments by recognizing that the IP
process does place a large burden on development at Eclipse. New projects in
particular have a lot of work and lengthy delays to deal with. It sucks.
We at the EMO are doing some things to help improve the process.
We've hired two more people to help with the process, and intend to have IPzilla implemented by the
end of September. I admit that we under-estimated the staffing required to
support this process and it has taken us far too long to address the situation.
But with the scarce resources we have, we really are trying to make things
better as fast as we can.
However, it is important to remember that the EMO is charged with
the responsbility of implementing the Eclipse
IP Policy as it is approved by the Board. Many of the key suggestions below
run counter to that policy. If we are going to be able to implement any of
those ideas, the policy itself would have to be changed. As I have indicated
below, if the Planning Council wishes to, I believe that it would be a worthy
conversation to have with the Board. But from the EMO's perspective, I think it
would be more helpful if we separated the conversation into two pieces: (a)
process improvements we can make within the scope of the current policy, and
(b) changes suggested by the Planning Council to the policy itself.
- Transparency, especially of the status of a contribution
questionnaire and its position on the queue
I believe that IPzilla
will directly address these.
- People should be able to run IP clearance in
parallel with development. Perhaps a shadow repository. Or allow code to
be checked in before it is reviewed, but just not released before it is
reviewed. The goal is to prevent the legal review delay (no matter how
short it is) from slowing down development.
- Checkin-but-not-release seems like a good
idea to us. What if we find that there is an IP violation? Do we need to
remove the code from CVS? What happens now? Have we gone back and removed
offending code in the past? How would that be different here?
This has been explicitly discussed and rejected at the Board.
If the Planning Council would like to make a direct representation to
the Board in support of this, I think that would be a great idea. But the
Board decision currently trumps the Planning Council request.
- Project leads and PMCs need to be cc'd on CQs and
replies. The status of CQs needs to be visible to submitters, project
leads, and PMCs.
I believe that IPzilla
will directly address this.
- Self service tools for scanning by PMCs and PLs
(and committers).
I could imagine making the scanning tool available via committer
tools so that they can pre-scan. But their analysis does not replace
the EMO's. This will require lots of training and documentation, as the
current tool is not exactly user friendly. But this is certainly a suggestion
worthy of consideration.
- Foundation-sponsored training for committers
around IP responsibilities
- Earlier in the cycle for reviewing about.html
files and such.
- Aim for milestone M-n approval and "no
new third-party stuff added after Mx"
Agreed. But I would like to point out that everyone should be
very careful about what they ask for. Depending upon the value of
"x", a rigorous application of the "no new third-party
stuff added after Mx" would (by my recollection) have resulted in both the
Eclipse and WebTools projects not shipping in Callisto. As I recall in both
cases there were components found very late in the release cycle.
- legal@ should reply to emails in a timely
manner
Agreed. I also believe that IPzilla will help to
address this.
- It takes too friggin' long.
- Perhaps we can have quick provisional
approvals.
Believe it or not, we already do quick provisional approvals
wherever we can. We also triage EPL contributions and try to turn
those around ASAP. The third-party approvals take more time. As for the time of
the approvals, we have grown the staff from one person to three people and will
have IPzilla implemented by the end of September. Hopefully things will start
to improve soon.
ACTION: [Bjorn FB] pass
these along to legal@
I kind of liked the idea of allowing check-ins but not
allowing releases before legal clearance because how is that different from
what we do today when someone checks in bad code?
Again, this has been explicitly discussed and rejected by the Board
of Directors.
Here's the problem: once code is checked into CVS and goes into
the builds, we are distributing it. Once we are distributing it any and
all license terms apply and any and all liabilities could be incurred. The
current thinking is that this is a risk. I do very much appreciate that this risk
reduction comes at a cost. Again, if the Planning Council wanted to re-visit
this issue with the Board, I do believe that it would be a
worthy conversation to have.
Perhaps you could comment on that to the
eclipse.org-planning-council@ mailing list.
