Re: Seeking input from developers: glibc copyright assignment policy.

[Bruno Haible <bruno@clisp.org>]

Accepting DCO-based contributions has legal risks (see [1] and others).

The cited advantage of the DCO policy is that it promises "future growth
and vibrancy" [2].

How would this advantage work in practice? It would mean that an
occasional contributor, after contributing a patch, would not have to
wait a longer time until their patch is accepted. Thus increasing the
motivation of the contributor to contribute again.

So, you have occasional contributors, for whom the DCO can be an
advantage. And you have regular contributors, who can be expected to
do the paperwork with the FSF; it's a one-time thing.

Occasional contributors will typically not start their journey with
contributions to the dynamic loader, the thread library, or the regex
engine.

Here is a proposal to keep the advantage for most occasional contributors,
while at the same time reducing legal risk for the important parts of
glibc.

1) Define a "core" of glibc to be the set of files which you would not
   want to see as the subject of "this file contains a copyright violation,
   you must remove it" claim by some company, university, or ill-behaving
   individual.

2) Allow DCO contributions only to non-core files of glibc.

This means, occasional contributors would be able to contribute with DCO
to things like unit tests, iconv conversion modules, assembly-language
implementations for <string.h> functions, the nscd daemon, and such.
But would be required to exchange papers for legally significant [3]
contributions to "core" areas (that IMO would include the dynamic loader,
the thread library, and the regex engine).

Such a policy would provide a balance between
  - motivating contributors during their first contributions, and
  - avoiding legal risk.

Bruno

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2021-06/msg00080.html
[2] https://sourceware.org/pipermail/libc-alpha/2021-June/127616.html
[3] https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Legally-Significant.html