OpenBMC Maintainer/CLA Workflow

OpenBMC contributors are required to execute an OpenBMC CLA (Contributor License Agreement) before their contributions can be accepted. This page is a checklist for sub-project maintainers to follow before approving patches.

  • Manually verify the contributor has signed the ICLA (individual) or is listed on an existing CCLA (corporate).
    • Executed CLAs can be found in the CLA repository.
    • If you were not added to the appropriate CLA repository ACL send an email to openbmc@lists.ozlabs.org with a request to be added.
    • If a CLA for the contributor is found, accept the patch(1).
  • If a CLA is not found, request that the contributor execute one and send it to manager@lfprojects.org.
    • Do not accept the patch(1) until a signed CLA (individual or corporate) has been uploaded to the CLA repository.
    • The CCLA form can be found here.
    • The ICLA form can be found here.

An executed OpenBMC CLA is not required to accept contributions to OpenBMC forks of upstream projects, like the Linux kernel or U-Boot.

Review the maintainers' responsibilities in the contributing guidelines. Maintainers are ultimately responsible for sorting out open source license issues, issues with using code copied from the web, and maintaining the quality of the code.

Repository maintainers ought to have the following traits as recognized by a consensus of their peers:

  • responsible: have a continuing desire to ensure only high-quality code goes into the repo
  • leadership: foster open-source aware practices such as FOSS
  • expertise: typically demonstrated by significant contributions to the code or code reviews

(1) The semantics of accepting a patch depend on the sub-project contribution process.

  • GitHub pull requests - Merging the pull request.
  • Gerrit - +2.
  • email - Merging the patch.

Ensure that accepted changes actually merge into OpenBMC repositories.