[dpdk-moving] Minutes from "Moving DPDK to Linux Foundation" call, November 29th

[O'Driscoll, Tim]

> From: Francois Ozog [mailto:francois.ozog at linaro.org] 
> Sent: Thursday, December 1, 2016 7:09 PM
> To: Dave Neary <dneary at redhat.com>
> Cc: O'Driscoll, Tim <tim.odriscoll at intel.com>; Michael Dolan <mdolan at linuxfoundation.org>; moving at dpdk.org
> Subject: Re: [dpdk-moving] Minutes from "Moving DPDK to Linux Foundation" call, November 29th
>
> Hello,
>
> please find the Linaro CLA that passed many large companies lawyers for IP: http://opendataplane.org/contributor/individual/
>
> Compnies that already signed it (not all are listed): ARM, Broadcom, Canonical, Cavium, Cisco, Comcast, Ericsson, ENEA, Facebook, Hisilicon, HP Enterprise, Huawei, MontaVista, Nokia, NXP, Qualcomm, RedHat, Samsung, Socionext, Spreadtrum, ST microelectronics, Texas Instruments, Wind River, ZTE
>
> I wonder how to read "Need for a CLA is a problem for some contributors due to the need to get legal approval."
>
> Is it: "let's mask the problem to lawyers because they may NOT allow us to continue our technical fun?" or is it "this is just a burden that may take long and I don't want to lose time".
>

The concern that several people have expressed is that a CLA adds overhead for contributors to the project. If somebody wants to contribute, they would need to go through the extra step of getting the CLA reviewed and approved by their legal department. Depending on their company's legal policy, that may slow down or block contributions.

Mike is correct that the legal details are better handled by lawyers, but before that it would be good to make sure we're clear on the problem you're trying to address. You said on Tuesday that some Linaro members would not be able to contribute to DPDK and/or use it in production without some form of patent protection. Looking at the list of LNG members, many of them are already significant contributors to DPDK, so that statement doesn't make sense to me. Can you perhaps clarify what exactly the problem you're trying to address is, just to make sure we all understand it properly?