Re: Discussion About Community Contributions to NetBeans

I am not a lawyer and do not work for Oracle, but I certainly do agree
that requiring paper copies (or electronic copies of paper copies) of
contributor agreements seems complicated and dated, and that this is
an area that could definitely be improved.

I would suggest that the people in charge of the CA process consider
whether the "Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce"
enacted as federal law in the US makes submitting CAs on paper
unnecessary:

   http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/15/usc_sup_01_15_10_96.html


On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Daniel Bell <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi All,
> Please note: no criticism is intended here: just an idea for improvement.
> Having just signed/submitted a CA, I feel that this is an area that could be
> improved to lower the bar for potential contributors to NetBeans. I'm not
> sure if I'm the only one who doesn't own a scanner, but that turned out to
> be a significant hurdle for me submitting the CA: I had to print and post
> the PDF. I know that CA's are important, particularly for companies/projects
> as large as Oracle/NetBeans, so I would never suggest removing them.
> However, I wonder if the process could be made easier (potentially for all
> concerned) by adopting an online CA submission system, such as Google has
> for individual contributors
> (http://code.google.com/legal/individual-cla-v1.0.html). As far as I know,
> corporate CLAs for Google still need to be signed and faxed though.
> Cheers,
> Daniel
>


-- 
Tom Wheeler
http://www.tomwheeler.com/