[License-review] Outstanding license submissions

[Karl Fogel]

FWIW, I think we *did* actually start using a tracker for license approval submission -- the OSI's then-new Redmine instance.  I can't remember when we started doing that, but IIRC the sequence of events went something like this:

  1) We started tracking license submissions in Redmine, a few years ago.

  2) Then there was a huge security bug found in Ruby-on-Rails, causing many organizations, including us, to take down their Redmine instances.

  3) Our Redmine stayed down for a while (too long) because the security issue was not trivial to solve, and we didn't have much infrastructure resources to devote to it.

  4) Thanks to Bruno Souza, our Redmine service was restored by moving to his company's hosting, where it resides to this day at osi.toolscloud.net.

  5) But in the meantime, there was changeover on the Board and we more or less forgot that we had been tracking anything about license submissions in Redmine, even though the data is (I believe) all still there.

I suspect that Richard's extremely thorough review of the primary sources -- the mail archives -- probably found everything there was to find, and that if you look in Redmine it will confirm what Richard found but not change anything.

I'm not sure Redmine is the best tool for tracking submissions anyway; it was just what we had.  Actually, it probably is a a great tool *if* you customize the ticket state-flow process for the license-submission tracker sufficiently.  But there might be other tools out there that get us closer to what we want out-of-the-box, without requiring someone who knows about Redmine customization.

So, what's my point? :-)

Basically, just: do look in Redmine to see if there's anything that could be ported over to the new tracking system, when/if a new tracking system is set up for license approval submissions.

Three cheers for institutional memory!

Best,
-K

Josh Berkus <josh at postgresql.org> writes:
>On 06/02/2015 08:47 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
>> Hi license-review,
>> 
>> There are a number of licenses that have been submitted for approval
>> that have fallen through the cracks. What that number is is
>> debatable.
>
>I strongly suggest that we might want to shift to using an issue tracker
>for license submissions.  One of the problems I have on this list is
>that I can't keep track of what the status of a lot of these submissions
>is; discussion just trails off, and I'm not clear if they're going to
>the Board or not.  For example, I was under the impression that the NASA
>license had already gone to the board.
>
>Using an issue tracker would make it easier for both us and the license
>submitter to track status, and for the board to catch up on all
>discussion when it comes to final approval.  It would also make it
>easier for us to track changes made by the submitter.
>
>In other words: maybe it's time for us to start treating this as an OSS
>project.
>
>I don't care which issue tracker, as long as it has a marginally usable
>web interface and configurable email notification.
>
>--Josh Berkus
>
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