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

[Peter Löfgren]

Hi,

Thanks for the responses.
To clear some things up, I was asked by Kevin Roast and did agree to the
contribution and did not ask for a monetary reward. I have been attributed
in the blog post and in the about box. Sorry for any confusion, did not
mean to imply that Alfresco had done wrong. My question was if monetary
reward may exist, and if so inform future contributors of their rights.

What Richard mentioned about the license is important. I did not think of
it at the time (and had no idea that the add-on would turn out that well
with the joint effort we had). So I think that the ootb can have some basic
information on what the effect the choice of license can have if what you
create later will be used by others (like Alfresco Software Inc.)

So a section on the ootb web about
*Contributors rights*
- Planning for the future, choose the right license
- What to require in terms of attribution
- Can you reasonably expect payment
- Linking to Alfresco's contributor agreements/info (does that exist?)
- If you are asked to Contribute, check with ootb first (can we do this, we
are not lawyers)
- And else that is relevant...

Wiki is semi-ok for attribution, but hoping for more since any links there
get rel="nofollow" and does not help you in googla page rank. And yes, that
is something that can be very valuable. So I'm looking for a listing of
contributors on the official Alfresco site http://www.alfresco.com/community.
And there can be a listing of Community Stars, for individuals that can be
used for their CV.

Again, Alfresco have not wronged me, and I'm proud to be listed as
contributor. My idea was to find an area where ootb could be of help for
future contributors that find themselves having to make a decision if to
agree on contributions. I kind of just said ok, cool, but then later got
buyers remorse (for lack of better analogy, I was part seller here). It
would have been nice to have some place to find some info on the topic
related to Alfresco.

Peter


2014-08-21 22:52 GMT+02:00 Richard Esplin <richard.esplin at alfresco.com>:

> Rereading Peter's email, and doing some digging, I want to provide a brief
> correction to my last post. Though I agree we can do better, I don't think
> we
> did awful.
>
> I see that Peter's contribution was called out in Kevin Roast's blog.
>
> http://blogs.alfresco.com/wp/kevinr/2014/06/27/alfresco-community-5-0-a/
>
> And based on Peter's original email, it was correctly cited in the
> contributor
> list. (I haven't personally checked.)
>
> I agree that we should have listed it in the release notes, but that has
> not
> been our habit in the past. I will propose we start doing that.
>
> Is there some place where you feel we inappropriately took credit for
> Peter's
> work? How else do you think we should have given credit?
>
> Thank you for the conversation. This feedback will help formulate our
> policy
> in the future.
>
> Richard
>
> On Thursday, August 21, 2014 14:23:54 Richard Esplin wrote:
> > I completely agree with this feedback.
> >
> > It should have been called out in the release notes and the blog post.
> >
> > I do not yet know who made the decision to include PdfJS, or why it was
> not
> > communicated to have been a community contribution.
> >
> > But it was likely one or two engineers working on their immediate task.
> They
> > were asked to improve the viewer, and they improved the viewer. If they
> > communicated to their leader how it was improved (by leveraging a
> > contribution), the leader didn't take the time to record it and pass that
> > information to the documentation team who create the release notes.
> >
> > That explanation is not meant as an excuse. I agree that we messed this
> up.
> > But hopefully it helps you understand how it happened.
> >
> > Thank you Peter and Heiko for raising this concern. This is a really
> clear
> > example I can use with my team to educate them.
> >
> > My apologies,
> >
> > Richard
> >
> > On Thursday, August 21, 2014 22:06:46 Heiko Robert wrote:
> > > Hi Richard,
> > >
> > > thanks a lot for your feedback and your engagement. I don't want to
> > > speak for Peter but give you a feeling what customers think about
> > > Alfresco already using this feature long time with the addon from Peter
> > > and Will. I'm sure he is pretty aware what he is doing when he chooses
> > > Apache license. The first statement from one of our customers: "Wer
> > > hat's erfunden? LOL (who has invented it)" - this is a funny quote from
> > > a german commercial for swiss cough candys convicting a poser saying he
> > > made the best drops. So it's not just the communication to the
> > > contributor - this behavior is also bad marketing from Alfresco to the
> > > enterprise customers.
> > >
> > > It's more or less not what Alfresco mentions (or leaves out to mention)
> > > but the way you do it. Since we do not adorn ourselve with borrowed
> > > plumes, we would like to get straight here:
> > > If we did not develop the soup, we shouldn't announce it as ours... I
> > > can't belive it was a descision of a single developer to integrate the
> > > addon without any mention to the developer and to put it as a new
> > > feature on the release note and blogs that way.
> > >
> > > Let's work on it.
> > >
> > > Heiko
> > >
> > > Am 21.08.2014 20:06, schrieb 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.
> > >
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