The License Review mailing list is considering using a project management tool for public tracking of the license review process. This page is for collecting information related to this tool selection.

The License Committee recommends hiring a person to aid in the identification and implementation of a better workflow for license review. We have decided that the current email listserve is inadequate because it is exceedingly difficult to follow discussions, which reduces participation. The tasks that this person will undertake are:

• Identify an appropriate license-review vehicle with the below attributes
• Implement the vehicle on an OSI-approved host
• Document the expected process for reviewing a license and the roles of all participants in the process
• Document the solution and any maintenance tasks so they can be handed off to a new maintainer
• Evaluate feasibility of creating a complete, searchable database of all license-review emails, either incorporated into the tool or separate from the tool (currently emails are at at least three different urls)

Requirements for license-review process

Must have

• Ability to submit a license for review
• Being able to immediately identify the current state of review for a license (eg. "approved", "rejected", "new", "being redrafted", "invalid", "rejected", etc.)
• Ability to submit updated revisions of a license, without destroying previous ones or history
• Ability to comment on specific sections/words/lines of a given draft of license
• Ability to comment on a license generally
• Ability to moderate discussions (including removing comments, editing comments, banning users)
• Ability to close the process with the publication of an accompanying rationale document
• Discussions must be publicly accessible, without authentication
• Users must authenticate and maintain a consistent identity in order to comment/participate in the process
• Time-stamping of all comments and submissions
• Entirely separate discussions for each license
• Discussions must be archiveable and available to reference
• Easy to learn and use by non-technical users
• Must not assume experience with specific technical tools (i.e. requirement to use git, XML, a specific programming language, etc.)
• Tools should be open source

Nice to have

• Ability to cross-reference a different comment in the same or different discussion
• Searchable discussions
• Canonical URIs for each license for review
• Machine-readable output from the license review process (text of the license + metadata such as Author, Date approved, Link to discussion, etc.)
• Low administrative overhead/hosted service (OSI does not have a good track record of hosting/maintaining new services)
• Previous license review emails can be added so that all license reviews are in the same place (we may need to engage someone separately to complete a migration)
• Configurable notifications in order to watch and follow discussions
• Welcoming to new community members
• Badges to easily identify participants to provide context (e.g. OSI board members, long-time community participants, etc.)
• Not mandatory to use the tool in order to participate in review, i.e., system integrates with an email workflow