Governance: Remove Google CLA requirement

[ddevault]

Moving a conversation which has been taking place variously on IRC/Discord and PR comments to a GitHub Discussion.

The CLA requirement is onerous and unduly privileges Google with respect to the governance and maintenance of jj, and it pushes contributors away -- like myself. I don't have a Google account with which to complete the CLA process and I do not want to give Google any special privileges above and beyond what is afforded by the same Apache 2.0 license myself and everyone else is entitled to when receiving this code.

The Developer Certificate of Origin is a better solution for establishing provenance and accountability.

[ddevault]

(reproducing some of the remarks I've made on IRC for posterity here on GitHub)

It has been suggested that jj could be "donated" by Google to a legal entity like the Linux Foundation or Apache. Personally I would be fine with jj being under the stewardship of the Linux Foundation, moreso than Apache but either is better than Google. Apache has a similar CLA but Apache at least is an organization that I can see myself having some influence on policy and governance within; not so with Google.

However, I do object to this framing in general. What exactly is there for Google to donate? Google does not own the copyright, even from contributors who have signed the CLA, with the exception of the contributions from Google employees who have separately signed a copyright assignment agreement. As far as I'm aware "jujutsu" is not trademarked, either. The software's intellectual property is jointly held by all of its contributors, not by Google, so what material property does Google actually have the right to "donate" to anyone? At best they can assert stewardship (something that they currently officially disclaim) and then "spiritually" transfer that stewardship to someone else.

I don't really think this project needs to belong to a foundation, though, and the overhead of getting one to agree to take it and doing some kind of formal hand-over seems entirely unnecessary. The material problem is really just that @martinvonz is in charge of this project and Google requires employees who are in charge of free software projects to use the CLA, and the most prescient solution is for Google to agree to let @martinvonz, on his authority as the maintainer, remove the Google CLA requirement (perhaps instituting the DCO instead), and then continue to contribute to this project and its governance not as Google's proxy but on equal terms as everyone else.

[joyously]

What exactly is there for Google to donate?

I think I read that Martin was working on the project as his job, so Google has donated his paycheck.

[ddevault]

Sure, but sponsoring labor is not the same thing as owning property. They can't retroactively give Martin's labor to a foundation, as it were.