[Opensim-dev] 6 month viewer code barrier dropped and Contributor's Agreement in place

[Justin Clark-Casey]

Hi folks,

It has been a long time in coming since the announcement in late June [1], but today we are finally dropping the 6 month 
cooling off period between contributing to OpenSimulator and contributing/reviewing code in the GPL/LGPL licensed Linden 
Lab viewers and downstream viewer projects (e.g. Imprudence/Kokua, Firestorm, etc.).

In other words, I (as an OpenSimulator developer) can now go read and submit patches to Imprudence or Firestorm and 
there's no issue if those developers want to submit patches to OpenSimulator.  Indeed, potentially we could even become 
core members of each other's projects.

However, as detailed in [1], in order to better deal with any future questions over code origin, we now need anybody 
submitting a significant code change to OpenSimulator to submit a Contributor's Agreement.  This applies to all 
developers, including core.  These agreements explicitly grant a copyright license over the contribution to the Overte 
Foundation, which is now the formal distributor of OpenSimulator.  Note that this is copyright license only, not 
ownership.  The agreement also requires the licensing of any patents that apply to the contribution which are owned by 
the contributor.

A significant code change is defined as

1. A new feature of any size.
2. Any other code change of more than 100 lines.

Bug fixes, implementations of existing LSL functions and patches that fill in missing parts of existing OpenSimulator 
features (for instance, persisting the no-fly attribute of parcels) will not count as new features, as long as the 
patches are under 100 lines.  We're taking this approach so that we don't discourage one-time casual contributions.  But 
if you are regularly contributing small changes then please seriously consider submitting an agreement.  We may need to 
ask you at some stage anyway.

The Mantis handles of people who have a CLA on file will probably be posted on the development team page of the wiki 
sometime soon, maybe in a new section.  It will be up to you if you want to add any personal details.

These requirements may quite possibly get adjusted and clarified in the future.

The instructions for submitting a contributor's agreement are at [2].  There is an FAQ at [3].  Any further questions 
please ask on this mailing list.

These changes do not apply to patches already in Mantis.

[1] http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Foundation
[2] http://www.overte.org/contribution-agreement.html
[3] http://www.overte.org/faq.html

Best Regards,

-- 
Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
http://justincc.org/blog
http://twitter.com/justincc