History for ContributorFAQ

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Zope Corporation (ZC) is opening the Zope Subversion repository to allow checkins
from external contributors.  This document provides answers to
frequently asked questions about the Zope Subversion approach and policies
for contributors.

  1) How do I become a contributor?

     Contributors generally start out by first participating in discussions
     and contributing patches, becoming known in the community.  Start by
     first playing with Zope via ReadOnlyAccess and joining the 
     "Zope3-dev mailling list":http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope3-dev
     Once you get oriented, and realize you want to and can contribute via Subversion,
     ask on the Zope3-dev list or to one of the existing contributors about
     getting commit access.  If the developers see a fit they will invite you
     to join.  (See ContributorIntroduction for more background.)

     Once invited, please fill out the "Zope Committer
     Agreement":http://foundation.zope.org/agreements and mail the signed
     copy to the Zope Foundation.  The ZF will then create a Subversion login
     for you, add you to the committers mailing list, and send you
     instructions for setting up your commit access.  Note that your
     authenticated Subversion commits are considered ongoing legal acceptance of the 
     terms for contribution.

  3) Why do you require a real signature?

     Good question.  The Python community does not require this, but
     the Mozilla community does.  We're choosing the latter example as
     closer to the goals for commercial legal integrity of Zope.
     Issues of legal status and indemnity are important to ZC and to
     business interests in the Zope community.

  4) What is the joint ownership model?

     When a group of people work together on a software project, the
     resulting material is available under some kind of terms.  In some
     cases, the code is just available with no statement of ownership
     status.

     For many open source projects, the contributor *licenses* their
     contribution to the project but retains the ownership.  Examples
     include Apache, Mozilla, and Python.  In a few open source
     projects, however, there is some organizing legal entity like a
     corporation and contributors assign their intellectual property to
     this entity.  Sun takes this approach, so we're told, on
     OpenOffice.

     These different approaches have problems, either legal or
     political.  Hadar Pedhazur at ZC thought up a new approach that
     draws from a sound background of case law.  Namely, the
     contributor and ZC will have joint ownership of the contibutions.
     Importantly, ZC will always ensure the contribution will be
     available under the open source ZPL license.

  5) What if Zope Corporation gets bought by a Mean Company and takes all the work closed source?

     Essentially, nothing more than would happen now.  ZC can't change
     the rules on currently-released software.  So the horse is out of
     the barn and can't be put back in.  Also, the Mean Corporation is
     just as able to make a closed source product under the previous
     model as they would under this new model.  Of course, in any model
     (except GPL), future contributions can be released under any
     terms.

  7) Can I provide my contributions under a different license, as stated in the License section of the Zope Contributor Agreement?

     In summary, yes but no.  You don't pick the license that you use
     when you give it to us.  Rather, we pick the license to give it to
     others (for our 1/2), and that license is the ZPL.  You, however,
     can pick any license in the world to give the code to anyone other
     than us.

     This language about a different acceptible license is there in
     case we decide at some point to change from the ZPL to a different
     open source license.

  8) Does someone have to jump through all these legal hoops just to submit a small patch?

     The contributor agreement certainly is a heavy process for someone
     that wants to make a small contribution, such as a patch.  These
     contributions are just as important to the health of an open
     source project as major code work.  Thus, Zope should encourage
     patch contributions, not create an enormous disincentive.  At the
     same time, integrity of the code base needs to be maintained.

     For small contributions, simply supply them through a
     communications channel such as the bug tracker or the mailing
     lists.  Alternatively, contact a committer or ZC directly.  A
     committer will then review the patch and assume the legal issues
     of committing it themselves.  Likely they will contact the patch
     submitter and get a confirmation that the patch can be used.

     The committers will have some guidelines on recognizing when it is
     reasonable to accept a patch.  It should be clear when something
     has little basis for being deemed intellectual property, versus a
     major change with advanced algorithms.