Contacted by the LWG. Now what?

Tasks that belong under the LWG Specific Duties are handled publicly, as an issue in the LWG issue tracker. One of these tasks is to enforce Drupal.org Git repo licensing policies on contributed code and media assets.

In practice, a notice about a licensing problem will be posted in the LWG’s issue queue with a link to a child issue in the affected project’s issue queue (to make sure that all project maintainers see it). In addition, the member of the LWG assigned to work on the issue will use the Drupal.org contact form on the owner's personal page to alert the owner about the issue (unless the contact form is disabled). The notice will describe the actions required by the maintainer to fix the issue.

What the maintainer will need to do

The steps below outline the normal process of a licensing issue:

1. The maintainer must review the notice posted by the LWG and ask questions if there is anything that is unclear about how to proceed.
2. The maintainer must acknowledge the notice and also state how much time will be needed to fix it if it is not immediately fixable (e.g. if it is necessary to secure permission from a 3rd party, this may take some time).
3. The maintainer must fix the issue and change state of the issue to "Needs review" to get the fix reviewed by the LWG.
4. The LWG will then change state to either "Fixed" or "Needs work" depending on circumstances. Repeat 3 and 4 until the state is set to "Fixed".
5. When the state is set to "Fixed" by the LWG, the issue is resolved (and will be automatically closed after two weeks).

Please note that in cases of serious copyright violations, a Git rebase may be required to purge copyrighted materials from the repo (however, the LWG will only require this if it is necessary for legal reasons).

Whenever you are not sure what to do, contact LWG via the open issue tracker in the LWG’s issue queue for advice.

What happens if I don't respond?

If you don’t fix the issue in a timely manner or progress on the fix seems to stall, then the LWG will publish an advisory on the project page urging users to uninstall the affected module and the project will be marked as unsupported (aka abandoned) to facilitate a user of the project taking it over and fixing it. If required for legal reasons, the LWG may also take steps to unpublish releases, to purge the repository of materials that violate copyright, or delete the entire project. Timely progress normally means that the maintainer must acknowledge the notice and make progress within two weeks of being contacted.

What the LWG will do

• Help you if you have questions.
• Review your response to the LWG notice and amend the issue summary if required.
• Review your plan to fix the issue and suggest amendments to it if required.
• Ensure timely progress.

Types of issues and how you should respond

The issue tracker in the LWG issue queue will have a tag called “Component” that will indicate the type of problem the issue is about. If the issue is about a specific project hosted in our Git repo, it will have one of the following values:

• Violation: This means that the problem is regarded by the LWG as unequivocal. A copyright violation, a project containing a 3rd party library with license that is not GPL2-compatible will typically have this component. To repair this, all files that violate the Git repo policy or copyright must be deleted from published releases.
• Exception Request; The Drupal Git Repository Usage policy allows a 3rd party assets in repositories provided certain conditions are met (these condition are described in Policy on 3rd party assets on Drupal.org). The LWG can grant an exception to allow the inclusion of 3rd party assets that are not otherwise allowed. If the LWG grants an exception, and documentation requirements are fulfilled, the issue can be closed as “Fixed”. If the LWG finds that there is not sufficient grounds to grant an exception, the maintainer must remove the files from published releases. If an exception is granted, but the documentation requirements for 3rd party content is not yet fulfilled, the component will be changed to “Attribution”.
• Attribution: The provenance, license and source of 3rd party assets present in a repo on Drupal.org must be properly documented. This component is used for projects missing this documentation.