[Twisted-Python] Handling upstream patches

[Glyph Lefkowitz]

> On Oct 18, 2015, at 6:10 AM, Gavin Panella <gavin at gromper.net> wrote:
> 
> On 16 October 2015 at 17:50, Glyph Lefkowitz <glyph at twistedmatrix.com> wrote:
> [...]
>> Canonical's IP policy is weird, and it is not clear to me that a patch
>> necessarily has to be MIT licensed to be accepted into Ubuntu's
>> Twisted, since Ubuntu itself is a commercial work.
> 
> Instinctively I would assume that Ubuntu would reject patches that would
> also be rejected by upstream on licensing grounds. It's in Ubuntu's and
> Canonical's interest to contribute upstream, and meddling with licenses
> would hamper that. The "weird" IP policy thing might be about things for
> which Canonical is the upstream, but I honestly don't know much about
> that and definitely cannot speak authoritatively.

It is not because I believe that Canonical would deliberately do something bizarre like making their version of Twisted actually be GPL3, but rather, that they make no guarantees to this effect (nor should they have to, the patches are in their system, not ours!).

> To confirm, LaMont -- who submitted the patch under question into Ubuntu
> -- did ask our team's management, and the answer was that Canonical has
> no interest in keeping that patch from going upstream, under whatever
> license applies to Twisted.


I'd still prefer that we just accept patches consistently through one mechanism.  Forgetting about the license question for a second, although today the review queue happens to be empty (!!!), a patch needs a champion willing to respond to review feedback almost as much as it needs to be written in the first place.  If the author doesn't have time to submit it, then it's unlikely they'll have time to respond to feedback and complete the process, which just makes more detritus in our issue tracker.

-glyph

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