[OOTB-hive] Community contributions to Alfresco Software - Can OOTB make sure it is properly rewarded?

[Richard Esplin]

For Alfresco to accept a contribution, we need rights to re-license it for 
inclusion in Enterprise Edition. We either get those rights by making sure 
code we use is already licensed under a liberal license (Apache), or by 
getting a contribution agreement.

When you release your code, you should make sure that the license you pick 
supports your goals.

I agree that our engineering team needs to get better at working with 
contributors. Our team often duplicates work that the community has already 
done. I hope I can help Alfresco to accept more contributions, and be more 
proactive in communicating with contributors. The way to achieve this goal is 
through education and cooperation.

Richard

On Thursday, August 21, 2014 14:25:13 Heiko Robert wrote:
> Hi Peter,
> 
> I assumed something like this when I read the Alfresco announcement. No
> comment...
> 
> The best way to avoid this is to licence under GPL or similar and if
> there is a requirement or request to include in the EE they need to ask
> you for another license (dual license). That's the same way like
> Alfresco did with CE but vice versa. It is hard to find an ideal
> solution for the bees because GPL may also prevent many companies to use
> it but this could be subject of the GOV discussion. Another insurance
> could be the bee marketing which may annouce the truth behind a new
> feature. That could be very embarrassing for Alfresco and reason enough
> to respect some minimum rules of grace.
> There was an initiative from Alfresco to get a dual license agreement
> from every committer on alfresco forge. Did you sign this?
> 
> Regards
> Heiko
> 
> Am 21.08.2014 11:00, schrieb Peter Löfgren:
> > I would like to bring up another topic where I think that OOTB can
> > help monitor the interests of the Community, and that is for
> > Contributors to Alfresco core.
> > There are two parts of this, one is that your code is used in open
> > source Alfresco, but it will also be used by the company Alfresco
> > Software Ltd in its commercial Enterprise edition and cloud offerings.
> > 
> > So what can one reasonably expect in terms of payments and rewards for
> > a contribution used by a commercial company? There are of course minor
> > contributions like a patch or simple code fix. But other times there
> > are more major ones, and for me this was the PdfJS viewer (created by
> > me and Will Abson) that are from 5.0 standard in Alfresco. For this I
> > have not received anything more than a mention in a blog post and
> > listing in the about box.
> > 
> > I must admit that I had no idea on what to expect, but I have for
> > other years at least received a free pass to Summit for my Community
> > contributions. This year nothing, and I understand that Richard only
> > has a certain number of free passes, and he has to pass the grace to
> > others. I agree on that when he has a limited numbers of free passes,
> > there are some great Community contributors that I agree this year
> > must be rewarded.
> > 
> > I certainly hope this does not come out as being greedy or whiny, this
> > is not what it is all about. I can make a living out of selling
> > services using Alfresco Community, so I'm very well aware of that I'm
> > already getting something from Alfresco Software Ltd without paying
> > them any. And in my particular example we also for PdfJS viewer made
> > use of an external library pdf.js from Mozilla. So it is complicated
> > who should be rewarded. It just made me thinking of what the OOTB can
> > do to help assuring the interest of the Community Contributors to
> > commercial Alfresco.
> > 
> > I do not know what is custom when a commercial interest make use of a
> > contribution. Maybe money never change hands. Or maybe I should have
> > asked for more. But there is other ways to reward that do now involve
> > money. For example a page listing official contributors, with a link
> > to my web (good for page ranks -> value), and easy when I claim to be
> > a contributor to to link to that page so it can be verified.
> > Along the line on this is a page on Alfresco Official website with
> > this and previous years Community Stars, little bit off topic for my
> > post, but something I see will bring value to those being acknowledged
> > by Alfresco.
> > 
> > So can OOTB put up something on the web on what a community
> > contributor should require, recommended steps to take, and expect in
> > return. Of course every case will be unique, but I'm thinking
> > establishing some sort of a baseline.
> > 
> > Peter Löfgren, Loftux AB
> > 
> > 
> > 
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