[scout-dev] Flagging IP contributions

[Wayne Beaton <wayne@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings Scout committers.

The recent committer elections have made it clear that the use of the
iplog+ flag on Bugzilla is not well understood by the project.

All projects are required to maintain a log of intellectual property
contributions. Since contributors retain the rights to the code that
they contribute, it is important that we keep track of those
contributions. This is part of the IP Log that must be submitted and
approved prior to making any official release of the project's code.

All contributions from non-committers need to be submitted via bugzilla.
You cannot apply patches to the project code that you receive via
private email or other sources. The primary reason for this is that
users who submit patches via bugzilla must explicitly agree to our terms
of use when they get an account (i.e. they give us permission to use the
contribution). Note that this policy will be expanded to include Gerrit
when that service becomes available.

We have a tool that can generate the complete log, but it only works if
it is provided with the required information. For contributions to be
properly recorded in the automated log, they must be flagged in bugzilla.

In general, it is preferred that you flag individual attachments with
iplog+; this way the attachment itself will appear as the contribution
in the log.

Sometimes the contribution comes in the form of a comment. In this case,
you *can* flag the entire bug as iplog+, but--due to limitations in
bugzilla--that will mean that every comment on the bug will be
considered as a potential contribution. This will add a lot of bogus
entries into the generated IP Log which will then need to be manually
removed.

It's always better to flag attachments (e.g. patches) when they are
available. Less work for you. Less work for me.

You can review the generated IP log here:

http://eclipse.org/projects/ip_log.php?projectid=technology.scout

There is a tool that can help you sort through contributions and make
suggestions on how you can/should flag bugzilla records here:

http://www.eclipse.org/projects/tools/ip_contribution_review.php?id=technology.scout

There is more information about IP Logs here:

http://wiki.eclipse.org/Development_Resources/IP_Log

HTH,

Thanks,

Wayne

-- 
Wayne Beaton
The Eclipse Foundation
Twitter: @waynebeaton