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Bug 495498

Summary: [CLA] Implement new version of CLA
Product: Community Reporter: Mike Milinkovich <mike.milinkovich>
Component: ProcessAssignee: Christopher Guindon <chris.guindon>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact:
Severity: normal    
Priority: P3 CC: denis.roy, Ed.Merks, emo, janet.campbell, rfontana, wayne.beaton
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: PC   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Bug Depends on: 498088, 498089, 498090, 499130    
Bug Blocks:    
Deadline: 2016-08-08   
Attachments:
Description Flags
Revised CLA
none
Fixed revision of ECA none

Description Mike Milinkovich CLA 2016-06-05 18:16:04 EDT
Created attachment 262248 [details]
Revised CLA

There have been a number of discussions within the EMO and the IP Advisory Committee of the Board about implementing a new version of the Eclipse Contributor License Agreement. Note that this new version will *not* require contributors to re-sign their CLA. Although there are some small differences between the current version and the proposed new one, they are not considered material enough to force everyone to re-sign. However, as contributors CLAs expire, they will be presented with the new one.

The changes under consideration include:

1. Rename the CLA to the "Eclipse Contributor Agreement" or "ECA". The reason
   to do that is that in many circles within the free and open source community
   "CLA" has a negative connotation, as many CLAs require authors to assign 
   ownership of their contributions to some entity. Eclipse does not do this, 
   nor ever intends to do so.

2. The current CLA basically copies and rephrases the Eclipse Contributor
   Certificate of Originality (CoO). It would be a lot easier to simply embed
   a direct copy of this text in the CLA.
   http://www.eclipse.org/legal/CoO.php

3. The Eclipse Foundation has its own CoO. We have had a number of requests to 
   move to the Linux Foundation's Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO), as it 
   is widely adopted and well understand by the broad community of open source
   producers and consumers. 
   http://developercertificate.org/

A PDF version of the revised CLA is attached.

Comments and feedback welcomed.
Comment 1 Mike Milinkovich CLA 2016-06-05 18:19:54 EDT
One additional point about the possibility of using the Linux Foundation's DCO: we would maintain a copy of that document on eclipse.org.
Comment 2 Richard Fontana CLA 2016-06-05 21:45:34 EDT
The body of the revised CLA still uses the term 'Contributor License Agreement' and the abbreviation 'CLA'.
Comment 3 Mike Milinkovich CLA 2016-06-05 21:52:56 EDT
Created attachment 262249 [details]
Fixed revision of ECA
Comment 4 Mike Milinkovich CLA 2016-06-05 21:53:27 EDT
(In reply to Richard Fontana from comment #2)
> The body of the revised CLA still uses the term 'Contributor License
> Agreement' and the abbreviation 'CLA'.

Duh. Fixed (I think). Revision posted.
Comment 5 Denis Roy CLA 2016-07-29 14:44:47 EDT
Assigning to Chris, as he will drive all the web-related changes.  Chris, please see the dependency tree.
Comment 6 Christopher Guindon CLA 2016-08-03 15:17:45 EDT
(In reply to Denis Roy vaca til Aug 15 from comment #5)
> Assigning to Chris, as he will drive all the web-related changes.  Chris,
> please see the dependency tree.

I created a bug requesting new text for the CLA FAQ page:
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=499130
Comment 7 Christopher Guindon CLA 2016-08-22 14:00:06 EDT
The new ECA is live!

thanks!