Re: Mediation

[Andrew John Hughes]

> >   Having a physical human
> > contact for new developers would certainly decrease the learning curve,
> > and help integrate the newcomer into the project.  Also, as you say,
> > there are a lot of things which occur on the mailing lists and in IRC
> > that are not formally noted, with developers instead relying on a kind
> > of secret wisdom.
> 
> And certainly not deliberately. It is often just a time issue (or not
> enough time to be more precise).
> 

Exactly -- which is why this mediator role would be a good idea.  We
then have someone who dedicates their time on the project to this task.

> >     Again, GNU Classpath is fairly non-standard in that:
> >     a) code developers have to be untainted
> >     b) its a GNU project with FSF-assigned copyright, so there is a formal
> > record of all code developers.
> > This applies more to code than anything else.
> 
> I don't think this is so non-standard. All projects must have some
> process in place to make sure they can actually distribute all
> contributions. We are just a little bit more upfront about it since we
> want to make as sure as possible not to get surprizes later on. It is
> standard practise for FSF GNU projects (see Keeping Free Software Free:
> http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Legal-Issues.html). And
> Apache projects have something similar (See the
> Contributor License Agreements http://www.apache.org/licenses/#clas).
> Even the Linux kernel these days has a way to track contributors
> (Documenting How Patches Reach The Kernel
> http://kerneltrap.org/node/3180).
> 

Yes, that was probably a little vague on my part.  I was primarily
referring to a) when referring to non-standard practises.  Thankfully,
b) is becoming the standard, although the Linux team needed a kick from
SCO.  Having to worry about developers having seen proprietary code from
the developer of another implementation of the same thing is fairly
uncommon.  Most other projects, I guess, don't have to attempt to be
fairly binary compatible with someone else's implementation.  Of course,
you get tainted in other forms (the whole Linux/SCO debacle is one case,
even though the implementation can be markedly different).

More generally, FOSS projects tend to be more aware of these issues at
the developer level, whereas an academic or business project would
probably have a default for all projects, with legal issues being
handled separately from development.  Developers have to be more
pro-active to protect their freedoms, it seems.
 
> Cheers,
> 
> Mark

Cheers,
-- 
Andrew :-)

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