A few weeks ago, I talked about a major overhaul of our IP processes. As part of that, we have posted our Public Review Drafts of our Eclipse Foundation Contributor License Agreement (CLA) and our Contributor’s Certificate of Originality (CoO).
I was asked why we needed both documents. I will repeat the explanation here:
The two documents are complementary.
The CLA is something that a contributor signs, and is a legal agreement.
The CoO is a statement that clarifies what we expect from contributors when they use the “signed-off-by” feature in git.
There is a saying that many lawyers use: “belts and suspenders”. Yes, there is some overlap between these two approaches, but there since the DCO is not something that a contributor is expected to sign, I don’t think that it adds any extra burden to the process.
Your comments and feedback would be greatly appreciated. However, please don’t do it in the comments here. We would prefer the community’s feedback on bug 401349.
Update: s/DCO/CoO/ in blockquote.
