Re: [MENTORS] Third Party source

[Greg Stein <gs...@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 6:15 PM, Alex Harui <ah...@adobe.com> wrote:
> On 6/7/12 3:00 PM, "Greg Stein" <gs...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> "Should a project move non-ASF copyright notices from Apache source files to
>>> the NOTICE file?
>>> No. If the copyright owner is still involved with the project, they should
>>> move the notice themselves or permit us to do so..."
>>
>> That policy exists for us to be nice to the original copyright holder,
>> and to ensure that we don't accidentally remove a statement.
>>
>> Since we have the grant from Adobe, just move the copyright notice
>> yourself. I suspect we'd even have the right to remove it entirely,
>> but again: to be nice, we'll retain it in the NOTICE file.
>>
>> Jeff doesn't have to do it himself: that's just deference to his
>> wishes and ensuring that we don't pre-suppose or get them wrong.
>
> No offense, but are you absolutely sure?

None taken :-)

Whatever *is* or *is not* in the header has zero bearing on the actual
copyright. The notice is there to tell others, not for the holder to
retain their rights. The copyright holder always has their rights,
regardless of any notice.

You're not attempting to alter his copyright (which you can't do);
you're simply altering how to tell others about it.

If you really want legal input along these lines (rather than
Incubator people's advice like myself), then it should have started on
legal-discuss. I've now cc'd that list. They'll provide some opinions
(rather than proper legal advice). If you require formal legal advice,
rather than opinions, then we'd need to do something different
anyways.

[leaving the remainder for benefit of legal-discuss]
>
> Unless I misunderstood the Adobe legal team, we could not remove the
> copyrights without Jeff's permission, otherwise we would have done so prior
> to donation.
>
> Furthermore, in [1] it also says the following:
>
> "Treatment of Third-Party Works
>
> The term "third-party work" refers to a work not submitted directly to the
> ASF by the copyright owner or owner's agent.
> Do not modify or remove any copyright notices or licenses within third-party
> works.
> Do ensure that every third-party work includes its associated license, even
> if that requires adding a copy of the license from the third-party download
> site into the distribution.
> Do not add the standard Apache License header to the top of third-party
> source files.
> Minor modifications/additions to third-party source files should typically
> be licensed under the same terms as the rest of the rest of the third-party
> source for convenience.
> Major modifications/additions to third-party should be dealt with on a
> case-by-case basis by the PMC."
>
> [1] http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html
>
> The Adobe legal team and Roy both agreed that we need permission or give him
> committer status.
>
> Thanks,
> --
> Alex Harui
> Flex SDK Team
> Adobe Systems, Inc.
> http://blogs.adobe.com/aharui


Cheers,
-g

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