Shipping plugins (was: Re: Release testing and the relationship between 'bzr selftest' and plugins)

[Martin Pool]

On 27 March 2012 02:49, Jelmer Vernooij <jelmer at canonical.com> wrote:
>>     > Shipping the plugins with core also has a few issues:
>>
>>     >  * lp:bzr  (AFAIK) falls under the contributor agreement, and all code
>>     > (with some exceptions) is (C) Canonical. Most plugins have different
>>     > copyright holders.
>>
>> Hmm, this one is hard.

This was a big thread, and I did not have time to read it all properly
yet, but I will answer this one:

This code already exists, in separate trees.  We distribute some of
them in .debs or (?) in installers.  We're willing to ship non-CA/CLA
code.

We also have code in the main tree in eg bzrlib/util that's
partitioned from bzr itself and under different copyright and/or a
different (compatible) licence.

"core plugins" in bzrlib/plugins/ are clearly separate, and just a
different tactic for distributing plugin code.

Having a copyright steward still makes sense for core code and for
plugins that are primarily developed by Canonical.  Distributing
plugins not under CLA/CA also makes sense.

If we copy code from one project to another, eg from a plugin to the
core or vice versa, we have to be sure we have legal permission to do
that, but it's never been a practical problem.  Specifically if there
is code from a plugin that ought to be in core we would need the
author at that point to do the CLA, they haven't already.

Adding all these up: if it makes technical sense for them to be core
plugins in the main tree, copyright isn't a reason not to merge them.

-- 
Martin