@tidoust ipr is blocking this change - does @mrshannon really need to be in the working group to land this change? I thought our model was to do IP rubber-stamping in bulk when the spec is imported from the community group to the working group.

For the record: in the meeting we resolved to accept this change.

@tidoust ipr is blocking this change - does @mrshannon really need to be in the working group to land this change? I thought our model was to do IP rubber-stamping in bulk when the spec is imported from the community group to the working group.

The notion of "rubber-stamping" tends to irk legal departments... The goal of the IPR bot is to alert the Working Group about situations where it is effectively going to incorporate a substantive contribution from a participant who did not make the exact same IPR commitments as WG participants.

CG participants contributions are covered by the CLA. WG participants contributions are covered by the W3C Patent Policy. The CLA does provide some level of RF guarantees. The W3C Patent Policy is a bit stronger than the CLA. The goal is to secure as many RF guarantees as we can for the final W3C Recommendation.

To solve this:

• Ideally, @mrshannon, you would be able to make a non-WG-participant commitment by signing the Final Specification Agreement, which you should be able to do starting from https://labs.w3.org/repo-manager/pr/id/gpuweb/gpuweb/2022. The licensing terms of the FSA are essentially equivalent to those in the W3C Patent Policy.
• Alternatively, @kainino0x, given the CG/WG setting, if the WG group is comfortable with the update, you may override the IPR bot and merge the PR as-is.

• Ideally, @mrshannon, you would be able to make a non-WG-participant commitment by signing the Final Specification Agreement, which you should be able to do starting from https://labs.w3.org/repo-manager/pr/id/gpuweb/gpuweb/2022. The licensing terms of the FSA are essentially equivalent to those in the W3C Patent Policy.

The only option that page currently lists is to join the GPU for the Web Working Group. It is very likely I can sign the FSA, but there is currently no means to continue along that route. I have already signed the CLA, when I joined the CG last year.

I have permission to sign the FSA, but no way to sign it as the IPR is still blocked on WG only.

@tidoust can you confirm if there should be a way to sign the FSA without joining the working group?

Otherwise we can probably figure out how to get him into the WG as an invited expert? Or we can override the change but we'd want to get WG approval which we don't have a process for.

@tidoust how does one override the IPR bot? I see @Ash-Nazg mentioned often but I don't know who owns that github account.

@mrshannon has been blocked on this process for a fairly trivial contribution (adding an optional feature that lifts a restriction in the spec). How can he sign the FSA without joining the WG itself? It seems all that matters is the FSA.

FWIW we can always admin-override to merge it, once we know the FSA is signed.

Someone not from WG signed FSA? If yes, how they do that?

I hate to bump this again, but is there any update on being able to sign the FSA as a CG member?

@tidoust this PR has been blocked for months on CG members not being able to sign the FSA. Any way we can escalate?

Oh no! Sorry this has languished for months, mentions of my name did not trigger the notifications I was expecting so I simply hadn't seen this.

There is a way to ask for non-member commitments through the IPR bot with two caveats:

1. I, or someone else from the team, need to push the right button. So you were right to ping me and I'm very sorry that I missed these repeated pings :/
2. That is per PR.

I just did that for this PR. @mrshannon, please check your email inbox for a link to the relevant online form.

Agreement completed. Once this PR is merged I will rebase #1949 on this and ping that one as well. Thanks.

And IPR bot turned green as a result, so all good!

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