Re: Emacs CLA requirement

[Phillip Lord]

Andrei Kuznetsov <r12451428287@163.com> writes:

> Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@russet.org.uk> writes:
>
>> I think as well as annoying, it's also extremely time consuming. Not too
>> bad for a single individual, of course, but if you have a package with
>> 30+ authors then it's painful. 
>
> If packages are interested in making it in-tree, I think they should
> ask for FSF copyright assignment from the beginning.  Otherwise they
> should just stay out, IMO.

Yes, hindsight is a great thing.

>
>> The practical upshot of this is, I think, less software gets into Emacs,
>> fewer people contribute patches, and a much higher likelihood of
>> duplicated functionality (c.f. seq.el and dash.el) between packages in
>> and out of the copyright assigned pool.
>
> There might be fewer people who contribute functionality, but I'd expect
> the people who do to stay; I also think people who are willing to spend
> time working to meet this particular requirement are more willing meet
> Emacs' other requirements, which some people seem to consider equally
> time-consuming, such as writing commit messages, ChangeLog and NEWS
> entries, and documentation.

Maybe. My own feeling is that willingness to go through a 
bureaucratic process is probably unrelated to their ability to write
good quality software with all that goes with it. I would also say that
being will to challenge whether a process is still fit for purpose is
not a sign of laziness. IIRC, that was exactly why the ChangeLog process
was challenged and dropped in favour of commit messages.

Phil