LF legal looked at the item and were
wondering what underlying need was motivating the ask. "In the
Linux kernel for example the maintainers are expected to know the
identity of anyone whose patches they're contributing. The real
issue is if there was ever a legal matter, would the person be
identifiable and available because we have their identity." I was
going to bring that question back to here but fell behind.
The risk of taking a DCO from someone
that can't be identified and reached is that a challenge to the
provenance of that code can't be answered - basically anyone could
claim "that was mine, you accepted stolen property" and there'd be
no one to refute that or take the blame for it. In which case
there'd be a very difficult decision - fight in court without any
testimony that the code wasn't stolen, or purge the code and
require a clean-room rewrite. Those seem like awful paths to have
to take, for the price of more vigilance up front.
Given this is a matter of legal
liability, it's not a decision the TSC can make; at best it could
recommend a change to the Governing Board and LF, but it's the GB
and LF that need to weigh that risk as they're the ones who would
bear the costs of any legal action.
I wasn't on Hyperledger on day zero,
but one thing I recall hearing is that one reason it was formed
was to provide a space safe from anonymous contributors who may
come along later seeking rent. I remember specifically hearing
that if it turned out Craig Wright was Satoshi, then the
Australian patents he (much later) filed on Bitcoin architecture
could be leveraged against anyone in the Bitcoin community, in
part because the license on the code was MIT and thus came with no
patent grants. I think we want to avoid that risk.
However I know the term "real identity"
is highly problematic. We aren't storing Social Security numbers
or DNA or anything like that. The DCO is attached to the commit
or PR, from which we can get the Github account name, but that
doesn't necessarily come with a real name or even a contactable
email address, which is also a problem when we pull together the
voter lists for the TSC election. Are each of you sure you'd be
able to get in contact with all submitters of PRs you've
accepted? Even good, real people have their email addresses go
bad or name changes and then can't be reached. So this isn't
about providing a hermetic seal around the problem, more showing
good faith and intent in ensuring we don't receive stolen or
patent-covered code.
I'll try and get more clarity. Til
then, please document any instances where people refuse to offer
PRs because they don't want to be contactable after the fact.
Brian
On 1/16/20 3:53 AM, Arnaud Le Hors
wrote:
Thanks for
the reminder
Hart. Brian was going to bring this up to LF legal. Brian, any
update?
--
Arnaud Le Hors - Senior Technical Staff Member, Blockchain
&
Web Open Technologies - IBM
From:
"hmontgomery@..."
<hmontgomery@...>
To:
Arnaud
Le Hors <lehors@...>, Christopher Ferris
<chrisfer@...>,
Silona Bonewald <sbonewald@...>
Cc:
"dan.middleton@..."
<dan.middleton@...>, "mwagner114@..."
<mwagner114@...>,
"tsc@..." <tsc@...>
Date:
01/16/2020
02:42 AM
Subject:
[EXTERNAL]
Re: [Hyperledger TSC] Call for agenda items for TSC call of Jan
16
Sent
by: tsc@...
Hi
Everyone,
Thanks
for all the emails, and it’s great to hear from you all
post-winter holidays.
I
had a question: has any progress been made on the DCO front?
An
email update would be awesome if there has been any news.
Thanks
a lot for your time, and have a great day.
Thanks,
Hart
From:tsc@...
[mailto:tsc@...]
On Behalf Of Arnaud Le Hors
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2020 10:51 AM
To: Christopher Ferris <chrisfer@...>;
Silona Bonewald
<sbonewald@...>
Cc: dan.middleton@...; mwagner114@...;
tsc@...
Subject: Re: [Hyperledger TSC] Call for agenda items for
TSC call of
Jan 16
All
right, let's cancel the call this week again but, please,
let's make sure
we make progress for next week.
Chris, I will take over the issue on promoted release, so you
can focus
on trying to make progress on the repo structure.
Silona, please, try to put together a proposal for the
governing doc update
Task Force.
Thanks.
--
Arnaud Le Hors - Senior Technical Staff Member, Blockchain
&
Web Open Technologies - IBM
From: "Christopher
Ferris" <chrisfer@...>
To: mwagner114@...
Cc: dan.middleton@...,
"Arnaud Le Hors" <lehors@...>,
tsc@...
Date: 01/15/2020
07:27 PM
Subject: [EXTERNAL]
Re: [Hyperledger TSC] Call for agenda items for TSC call of
Jan 16
Sent by: tsc@...
Yeah, I've been tied up in an offsite and haven't been able to
make any
progress on my actions (including the Fabric report).
Apologies.
Cheers,
Christopher Ferris
IBM Fellow, CTO Open Technology
email: chrisfer@...
twitter: @christo4ferris
blog: https://developer.ibm.com/code/author/chrisfer/
IBM Open Source white paper: https://developer.ibm.com/articles/cl-open-architecture-update/
phone: +1 508 667 0402
----- Original message -----
From: "Mark Wagner" <mwagner114@...>
Sent by: tsc@...
To: Arnaud Le Hors <lehors@...>
Cc: "Middleton, Dan" <dan.middleton@...>,
"Technical Steering Committee (TSC)" <tsc@...>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [Hyperledger TSC] Call for agenda
items for TSC
call of Jan 16
Date: Wed, Jan 15, 2020 1:14 PM
so no meeting?
On Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 08:23 Arnaud Le Hors <lehors@...>
wrote:
Thanks Dan for your input.
The thing is that we do have owners for the open issues. Chris
is leading
the repo structure TF, and volunteered to make a clean
proposal on the
promoted release one. Silona owns the TF proposal one for
governing docs.
Evidently they just haven't had a chance to make progress on
these.
--
Arnaud Le Hors - Senior Technical Staff Member, Blockchain
&
Web Open Technologies - IBM
From: "Middleton,
Dan" <dan.middleton@...>
To: Arnaud
Le Hors <lehors@...>,
"Technical Steering Committee (TSC)" <tsc@...>
Date: 01/15/2020
09:20 AM
Subject: [EXTERNAL]
Re: [Hyperledger TSC] Call for agenda items for TSC call of
Jan 16
Sent by: tsc@...
I
have added a couple DCI announcements, but these announcements
do not warrant
a meeting.
- DCI:
- The
DCI survey has incorporated edits from the fall review.
HL marketing suggests
it launch ahead of the Davos marketing campaign so we
can make use of visibility
from those hyperledger activities. This window also lets
us assemble results
in time to share at HLGF.
- HL
is requesting mentors for HLGF for a speed mentoring
session. Details of
the session are being planned. Please contact Celia
Stamps <cstamps@linuxfoundation.org>
if you would like to volunteer as a mentor.
I
think it would be ideal to identify / remind owners for/of the
open tasks
this week and we all commit to meeting next week with some
progress achieved.
This is not a full list of open items but a couple items I see
after reviewing
our last few meeting minutes…
- Repo
structure task
force:
- Cleaning
up / reorganizing
the governing documents.
- I
believe we need
a task force proposal?
Regards,
Dan
From:
<tsc@...>
on behalf of Arnaud Le Hors <lehors@...>
Date: Wednesday, January 15, 2020 at 8:40 AM
To: "Technical Steering Committee (TSC)" <tsc@...>
Subject: [Hyperledger TSC] Call for agenda items for
TSC call of Jan
16
Hi
all,
I'd rather not cancel this week's call but I can't say that
I've seen much
evidence of progress on the open issues. So, I'm hereby
inviting everyone
to chime in on what the agenda should cover this week.
The draft is here: https://wiki.hyperledger.org/display/TSC/2020-01-16+TSC+Agenda
Short of being able to build a decent agenda I will cancel
(again).
Thanks.
--
Arnaud Le Hors - Senior Technical Staff Member, Blockchain
&
Web Open Technologies - IBM
--
Brian Behlendorf
Executive Director, Hyperledger
bbehlendorf@...
Twitter: @brianbehlendorf
