launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Matthew Revell <matthew.revell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey Curtis,

On 8 November 2011 18:38, curtis Hovey <curtis.hovey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> At UDS, Laura Czajkowski ask me about how Launchpad could solve the
> problem where membership in a team is contingent on a signed code of
> conduct. This issue is not a priority for Lp stakeholders, and the
> implementation of the feature is complex. I think this feature would be
> valuable to several Lp communities and it might be developed in
> collaboration.

As we've discussed, I think this is precisely the sort of feature that
will have benefits for the Ubuntu community and that is ideal for
community contributors to work on.

Implementing something like this will not only make life easier for
Ubuntu community members but will also buy the Launchpad team some
good will with Ubuntu community contributors.

> Can a team have more than one concurrent agreement?

No. Aside from the additional complexity that would bring to the
implementation, I think that would undermine the primary use case
outlined by Laura. Ubuntu teams that have leadership responsibilities
need to know that they can hold that team's members to a certain set
of standards. If there were more than one current agreement, it could
be harder to tell who had agreed to what.

> Do new versions always require new signing?

Yes and no.

If I were signing a new paper contract, I would expect that my consent
applied to the exact version I were signing. Even if the changes are
only to correct typos, I would consider myself bound only by the
version I'd signed. Whether that'd hold up in law, I dunno, but we can
be better than lawyers, right? :)

However, wrt Canonical's contributor agreement, I believe that we're
happy for people who signed an earlier version to remain contributors
to Canonical's open source projects, despite our having a more recent
version of the agreement.

So, I think it depends on whether the team admins would expect that
team members are bound by new versions. My instinct is that we should
make this an option but I'd feel happier if we researched this.

> How do team admins know that users need to sign an agreement.

I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean, how do they know if a team
applicant has yet to sign the agreement?

> Do users need to assign the agreement /before/ being approved, during
> approval, or after approval?

Before. That way we make it easier on the team admins and I think I'd
find it harder to approve someone if they hadn't signed the agreement
the team required of them.

> Can I add a team to a team that has an agreement? Who signs?

That's interesting and I think we'd have to turn to Laura and others
to discover if they need that. I'm tempted to say "No" because it
sounds overly complex. If we say "yes", then every member of the
nested team needs to sign individually, or leave, before the team can
be accepted into the team that requires the CoC.

> Since the Ubuntu CoC is not extensible, we may want to create team
> agreements as a separate feature, but solving the existing problem will
> ensure the design is general enough to be reused.

I'd be uncomfortable with maintaining two separate ways of handling
agreements; one for the Ubuntu CoC and one for everyone else.

>    * We want a mechanism where agreements can be uploaded to launchpad
>      by users.
>    * User can upload a version that supersedes a previous agreement.
>      * The agreement may need to invalidate previous signed agreements.
>      * The agreement may be a minor revision/correction that is
>        existing signed agreements are valid.

I'm uncomfortable with this, because there's an expectation that teams
would be able to hold people to account against an agreement they
hadn't actually signed, even if the differences we only typo
corrections. I'd be happier with:

>    * User can upload a version that supersedes a previous agreement.
>      * The agreement may need to invalidate previous signed agreements and require team members to re-sign to retain their membership.
>      * The agreement may co-exist with one or more previous versions and it is clear to the team members which version each person has agreed to.

I think teams requiring some kind of CoC will want to switch off that
second option.

> Does the Ubuntu CoC need a team to work? Are the signers a member of a
> team? Are there advantages to formally making the Ubuntu CoC signers a
> team, such as knowing who has signed?

We need to speak to Jono Bacon's team about this. I'll get in touch
with him today.

Thanks for doing this Curtis.

-- 
Matthew Revell
Launchpad Product Manager
Canonical

https://launchpad.net/~matthew.revell