* What is the scope of a patch that requires a contributor agreement?
Van's advise is as follows: There is no definite ruling on what constitutes "work" that is copyright-protected; estimates vary between 10 and 50 lines. Establishing a rule based on line limits is not supported by law. Formally, to be on the safe side, paperwork would be needed for any contribution (no matter how small); this is tedious and probably unnecessary, as the risk of somebody suing is small. Also, in that case, there would be a strong case for an implied license. So his recommendation is to put the words "By submitting a patch or bug report, you agree to license it under the Apache Software License, v. 2.0, and further agree that it may be relicensed as necessary for inclusion in Python or other downstream projects." into the tracker; this should be sufficient for most cases. For committers, we should continue to require contributor forms. Contributor forms can be electronic, but they need to name the parties, include a signature (including electronic), and include a company contribution agreement as necessary. Regards, Martin P.S. I'm sure Van will jump in if I misunderstood parts of this.