[core-workflow] Please disable CLA checking for trivial GitHub patches

[Brett Cannon]

As shown in the response to your PR, core devs are able to override the bot
by simply ignoring the check (that's why it's not required to pass for PR
acceptance).

But the bot will never be adjusted to make its own call on what is or is
not covered. It's too risky legally to get this wrong, e.g. there are
patents guarding against how you iterate through things in telecom
switches, so you could theoretically use a patent by changing a single line
in a code example by how you iterate through something. I know that's an
extreme example, but that's the sort of world we have to guard ourselves
against. We also have lots of companies that ship Python in their product
who would be totally screwed if we got this wrong as they would then
potentially be liable for patent licensing costs.

So the bot will always be there and will always be all or nothing. Having
said that, core devs will always be able to ignore it in cases where it's
obvious there's no chance a patent is being violated or protected IP is
being used (e.g. spelling mistakes). If this causes the occasional
contributor to not fix a spelling mistake, that's unfortunate but I can
live with that as being overly cautious about this legal stuff lets me
sleep at night instead of worrying about being the guy who wrote a CLA bot
that was just a tad too loose that one time and sent the PSF into
bankruptcy over court costs. (You might think I'm exaggerating but I was
really worried about not messing up the design and coding of the CLA bot
because getting it wrong really does mean the PSF could be open to
lawsuits.)

On Thu, 6 Apr 2017 at 11:00 Alex Jordan <alex at strugee.net> wrote:

> Heya!
>
> Recently I sent https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/1012 - a typo
> fix to the docs. I got prompted to sign the CLA, but as I described in
> https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/1012#issuecomment-292038637, I
> really think that was unnecessary since it was only a couple
> characters.
>
> The bot should probably be adjusted so it doesn't prompt for casual
> drive-by contributions.
>
> I'm not subscribed so I won't see replies, but feel free to CC me if
> you need to (can't imagine why, though).
>
> Cheers!
>
> AJ
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