How to make a Pagure Pull Request and How it is licensed by default for contributors outside of 'packagers' group ?
Hello,
I'm trying to answer this question: "Under which license are the contributions done to Fedora Project, unless license is specified - and how make this clear to the contributors (or whether we make this clear enough)". The answer is _probably_ FPCA [1].
But I've run into practical questions of how contributions can be made to the Fedora Project in the first place. Let's start with contributions to Fedora Linux.
--
The first Google result for "Fedora pull request" query points to [2]. On the first glance it looks fine, but it has two major issues. 1/ The instructions won't work and are holey 2/ It is a page under a "Fedora CI" project.
1/ Nowadays, we have a way for contributors outside of the 'packager' group to make pull requests. It is a git push via HTTPS [3]. Neither [2] nor [3] describes that you need to have a FAS account first, since without it you can't log in the pagure to fork a project (otherwise there's nowhere you can push to). I wanted to propose an update, but ...
2/ ... this leads to a belief that such an important piece of documentation should be probably placed outside of the "Fedora CI" project, as it can be generalized to any project. What could be this better location for a new documentation page to which other pieces of documentation would point to?
And this HTTPS workflow leads back to my original question - since FAS users outside of 'packager' group AFAIK don't need to sign FPCA [1], but can contribute a code - under which license or agreement it is contributed ? If it is FPCA - are such contributors aware ?
3/ Are there any other ways to contribute to either Fedora Linux or the Fedora Project, which face the similar issue ?
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Fedora_Project_Contributor_Agreement [2] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/ci/pull-requests/ [3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/HTTPS-commits
--
Michal Schorm Software Engineer Core Services - Databases Team Red Hat
--
On Tue, Mar 22, 2022 at 12:25 PM Michal Schorm mschorm@redhat.com wrote:
Hello,
I'm trying to answer this question: "Under which license are the contributions done to Fedora Project, unless license is specified - and how make this clear to the contributors (or whether we make this clear enough)". The answer is _probably_ FPCA [1].
The FPCA basically says that there's a particular default license that applies in cases where the contribution is not "covered by explicit licensing terms that are conspicuous and readily discernible to recipients." This does not spell out what "explicit", "conspicuous" and "readily discernible" actually mean, much as you haven't explained what you mean by "specified". I would assert that the "unlicensed contribution" scenario contemplated by the FPCA is actually going to be fairly rare apart from the special case of spec files, which the FPCA was particularly aimed at. In the typical case, a Fedora-related project makes clear what the applicable license of a repository (or of files within a repository) is/are, and under the "inbound=outbound" convention, that will be understood to be the license of the contribution.
I'm not aware of any reason to make anything clearer that it currently is. I think at this point the FPCA is sort of a historical curiosity that lives on because of inertia (other than as an indirect statement of licensing policy around certain special things like spec files but those could be addressed in a different way).
And this HTTPS workflow leads back to my original question - since FAS users outside of 'packager' group AFAIK don't need to sign FPCA [1], but can contribute a code - under which license or agreement it is contributed ? If it is FPCA - are such contributors aware ?
If contributors haven't signed the FPCA, the FPCA doesn't apply to their contributions. But this is most likely unproblematic, for much the same reason that Fedora could abandon use of the FPCA altogether without causing any significant problem.
Richard
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Fedora_Project_Contributor_Agreement [2] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/ci/pull-requests/ [3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/HTTPS-commits
--
Michal Schorm Software Engineer Core Services - Databases Team Red Hat
-- _______________________________________________ legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
On Tue, Mar 22, 2022 at 7:06 PM Richard Fontana rfontana@redhat.com wrote:
I would assert that the "unlicensed contribution" scenario contemplated by the FPCA is actually going to be fairly rare apart from the special case of spec files, which the FPCA was particularly aimed at. In the typical case, a Fedora-related project makes clear what the applicable license of a repository (or of files within a repository) is/are, and under the "inbound=outbound" convention, that will be understood to be the license of the contribution.
I've never heard about "inbound=outbound convention".
I understand your answer as that: it is irrelevant whether the contributor specified the license (e.g. text "I submit this under GPL-2.0 license" in the pull request comment) or whether none was specified, or whether the FPCA was accepted by the contributor; since every contributor to a code (let's say a single package repository) is always legally assumed to be under the license othe code of that package has, unless specified differently by the contributor.
Is my understanding correct ?
Michal
--
Michal Schorm Software Engineer Core Services - Databases Team Red Hat
--
On Tue, Mar 22, 2022 at 7:06 PM Richard Fontana rfontana@redhat.com wrote:
On Tue, Mar 22, 2022 at 12:25 PM Michal Schorm mschorm@redhat.com wrote:
Hello,
I'm trying to answer this question: "Under which license are the contributions done to Fedora Project, unless license is specified - and how make this clear to the contributors (or whether we make this clear enough)". The answer is _probably_ FPCA [1].
The FPCA basically says that there's a particular default license that applies in cases where the contribution is not "covered by explicit licensing terms that are conspicuous and readily discernible to recipients." This does not spell out what "explicit", "conspicuous" and "readily discernible" actually mean, much as you haven't explained what you mean by "specified". I would assert that the "unlicensed contribution" scenario contemplated by the FPCA is actually going to be fairly rare apart from the special case of spec files, which the FPCA was particularly aimed at. In the typical case, a Fedora-related project makes clear what the applicable license of a repository (or of files within a repository) is/are, and under the "inbound=outbound" convention, that will be understood to be the license of the contribution.
I'm not aware of any reason to make anything clearer that it currently is. I think at this point the FPCA is sort of a historical curiosity that lives on because of inertia (other than as an indirect statement of licensing policy around certain special things like spec files but those could be addressed in a different way).
And this HTTPS workflow leads back to my original question - since FAS users outside of 'packager' group AFAIK don't need to sign FPCA [1], but can contribute a code - under which license or agreement it is contributed ? If it is FPCA - are such contributors aware ?
If contributors haven't signed the FPCA, the FPCA doesn't apply to their contributions. But this is most likely unproblematic, for much the same reason that Fedora could abandon use of the FPCA altogether without causing any significant problem.
Richard
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Fedora_Project_Contributor_Agreement [2] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/ci/pull-requests/ [3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/HTTPS-commits
--
Michal Schorm Software Engineer Core Services - Databases Team Red Hat
-- _______________________________________________ legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
-
Michal Schorm -
Richard Fontana