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Posted to dev@lucene.apache.org by Yonik Seeley <yo...@lucidimagination.com> on 2009/07/07 16:05:22 UTC
software grants
Regarding the software grant debate in
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LUCENE-1567
IMO, it's pretty subjective what needs a software grant, and I don't
think we should throw up any hard'n'fast rules about it. The bottom
line is that the PMC/committers are responsible for IP oversight for
everything committed.
Looking at past software grants from other projects, the bar looks to
be pretty high before projects typically go through it.
-Yonik
http://www.lucidimagination.com
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Re: software grants
Posted by Jukka Zitting <ju...@gmail.com>.
Hi,
On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 4:05 PM, Yonik Seeley<yo...@lucidimagination.com> wrote:
> Regarding the software grant debate in
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LUCENE-1567
> IMO, it's pretty subjective what needs a software grant, and I don't
> think we should throw up any hard'n'fast rules about it. The bottom
> line is that the PMC/committers are responsible for IP oversight for
> everything committed.
Agreed, the important thing is to ensure that we have the right to
publish and distribute the contributed code in our releases. That can
mean an existing license on the contribution, a reference to section 5
of ALv2, a CLA, a software grant, or whatever else that will hold up
under a license review.
There are few people who understand the potential licensing
complexities of code developed by a number of different contributors.
Does the submitter know that the work of the previous developers was
meant to be contributed to Apache? Where's the paper trail for that? A
software grant is a simple and easy way to cover an entire
contribution.
In this case, since all the work was apparently done within IBM (who'd
then be the copyright owner), anyone listed in the "Schedule A" of an
IBM CCLA could also contribute the code without needing an explicit
software grant.
BR,
Jukka Zitting
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RE: software grants
Posted by Uwe Schindler <uw...@thetaphi.de>.
Hi Grant,
> I think it is pretty clear that when the code lives in the public
> somewhere else (i.e. source forge or Google code, etc.) it needs to go
> through a grant.
>
> That being said, I'm not particularly concerned about Trie, for the
> record.
Trie was in Sourceforge's SVN as part of panFMP, so it lived in public
before. The last revision was 342:
http://panfmp.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/panfmp/main/trunk/src/de/pangaea/me
tadataportal/search/TrieRangeQuery.java?revision=315
<http://panfmp.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/panfmp/main/trunk/src/de/pangaea/m
etadataportal/search/TrieRangeQuery.java?revision=315&view=markup&pathrev=34
2> &view=markup&pathrev=342
http://panfmp.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/panfmp/main/trunk/src/de/pangaea/me
tadataportal/utils/TrieUtils.java?revision=308
<http://panfmp.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/panfmp/main/trunk/src/de/pangaea/m
etadataportal/utils/TrieUtils.java?revision=308&view=markup&pathrev=342>
&view=markup&pathrev=342
The first version in Lucenes contrib was a modified version of the above SVN
revision (see LUCENE-1470).
After that it was deleted from panFMP's SVN and the new and further
optimized Lucene version was used for this project. If you like, we can fill
out a software grant to be sure (if it is still possible to do this after
the code transfer). I am the only person that must sign the grant on my
side. I can do a checkout of these two files, tar and md5 them.
Uwe
Re: software grants
Posted by Michael Busch <bu...@gmail.com>.
I agree with you, Grant.
In the query parser scenario: filling out the software grant and
providing the tar+md5, which was the only part Apache required, was
maybe 5% of all the internal legal and approval work we had to do. Even
if Apache didn't require the grant, we'd still do this kind of internal
work for donations like this one.
I think for people consuming Lucene it is convenient and reassuring to
have software grants in place.
Michael
On 7/11/09 2:49 PM, Grant Ingersoll wrote:
> FWIW, I'm not trying to make it harder to donate, but I do want to
> make sure anything we accept is legally correct. Thus, I'd rather err
> on the side of caution. I suspect most people would rather have code
> that has less features and is legally correct versus more features and
> the code be legally in doubt. I'm happy to defer to legal-discuss@,
> board@, incubator@ when it is in question.
>
> -Grant
>
>
> On Jul 11, 2009, at 2:48 PM, Grant Ingersoll wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jul 11, 2009, at 9:18 AM, Yonik Seeley wrote:
>>
>>>> I personally don't get what all the fuss is about.
>>>
>>> I'm simply trying to avoid having rules I view as too strict (if
>>> interpreted strictly) enshrined as policy.
>>>
>>>> It's not hard to do a grant
>>>
>>> From the contributor side, it can be very, very, hard and can
>>> potentially take a long time. The bigger the company, the harder it
>>> can be.
>>> Many may not pursue a contribution at all it if they thought one would
>>> be required.
>>> We shouldn't make contributions harder unless it's very necessary.
>>
>> When there is doubt as to the legality of the donation, then it isn't
>> a question of harder or easier. It's just a matter of doing it right.
>>
>>
>>>
>>>> when it lives somewhere else in public or was developed by a
>>>> company or several individuals, it needs a grant.
>>>
>>> That's way too strict.
>>
>>
>> I don't see how something can be stated as too strict when it states
>> it on the Incubator page which was chartered by the board to put it
>> in place. I'd encourage you to take your questions to legal or
>> incubator when it arises.
>>
>>
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>
>
>
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Re: software grants
Posted by Grant Ingersoll <gs...@apache.org>.
FWIW, I'm not trying to make it harder to donate, but I do want to
make sure anything we accept is legally correct. Thus, I'd rather err
on the side of caution. I suspect most people would rather have code
that has less features and is legally correct versus more features and
the code be legally in doubt. I'm happy to defer to legal-discuss@,
board@, incubator@ when it is in question.
-Grant
On Jul 11, 2009, at 2:48 PM, Grant Ingersoll wrote:
>
> On Jul 11, 2009, at 9:18 AM, Yonik Seeley wrote:
>
>>> I personally don't get what all the fuss is about.
>>
>> I'm simply trying to avoid having rules I view as too strict (if
>> interpreted strictly) enshrined as policy.
>>
>>> It's not hard to do a grant
>>
>> From the contributor side, it can be very, very, hard and can
>> potentially take a long time. The bigger the company, the harder it
>> can be.
>> Many may not pursue a contribution at all it if they thought one
>> would
>> be required.
>> We shouldn't make contributions harder unless it's very necessary.
>
> When there is doubt as to the legality of the donation, then it
> isn't a question of harder or easier. It's just a matter of doing
> it right.
>
>
>>
>>> when it lives somewhere else in public or was developed by a
>>> company or several individuals, it needs a grant.
>>
>> That's way too strict.
>
>
> I don't see how something can be stated as too strict when it states
> it on the Incubator page which was chartered by the board to put it
> in place. I'd encourage you to take your questions to legal or
> incubator when it arises.
>
>
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Re: software grants
Posted by Yonik Seeley <yo...@lucidimagination.com>.
On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Grant Ingersoll<gs...@apache.org> wrote:
> On Jul 11, 2009, at 9:18 AM, Yonik Seeley wrote:
>>> It's not hard to do a grant
>>
>> From the contributor side, it can be very, very, hard and can
>> potentially take a long time. The bigger the company, the harder it
>> can be.
>> Many may not pursue a contribution at all it if they thought one would
>> be required.
>> We shouldn't make contributions harder unless it's very necessary.
>
> When there is doubt as to the legality of the donation, then it isn't a
> question of harder or easier. It's just a matter of doing it right.
*When* there is doubt as to the legality of the donation - sure...
that's always the case, even when we are dealing with smaller
contributions that don't warrant a grant. No one was saying
otherwise.
But my argument from above remains valid - a software grant is not
always a trivial thing and can be very expensive or impossible. We
shouldn't impose that unless we think it's really necessary.
> when it lives somewhere else in public or was developed by a company or
> several individuals, it needs a grant.
-1
it *may* need a grant.
-Yonik
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Re: software grants
Posted by Grant Ingersoll <gs...@apache.org>.
On Jul 11, 2009, at 9:18 AM, Yonik Seeley wrote:
>> I personally don't get what all the fuss is about.
>
> I'm simply trying to avoid having rules I view as too strict (if
> interpreted strictly) enshrined as policy.
>
>> It's not hard to do a grant
>
> From the contributor side, it can be very, very, hard and can
> potentially take a long time. The bigger the company, the harder it
> can be.
> Many may not pursue a contribution at all it if they thought one would
> be required.
> We shouldn't make contributions harder unless it's very necessary.
When there is doubt as to the legality of the donation, then it isn't
a question of harder or easier. It's just a matter of doing it right.
>
>> when it lives somewhere else in public or was developed by a
>> company or several individuals, it needs a grant.
>
> That's way too strict.
I don't see how something can be stated as too strict when it states
it on the Incubator page which was chartered by the board to put it in
place. I'd encourage you to take your questions to legal or incubator
when it arises.
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Re: software grants
Posted by Mark Miller <ma...@gmail.com>.
>> I personally don't get what all the fuss is about.
>>>I'm simply trying to avoid having rules I view as too strict (if
>>>interpreted strictly) enshrined as policy.
And I'm just trying to get something of an understanding of this stuff. I
feel like committers should have a good idea of the rules here. At one point
it was said: "I think its pretty clear...", but its certainly not clear to
me - and if I read the Apache stuff, its not clear either because
we haven't used that standard in the past. That just leaves me with you old
fogies as the source of what I should do in the future :)
I'm def not a fan of policy not matching action though. If I read
that draconian policy page before I used Apache Software, I would hate to
later find out, oh wait, that doesn't really apply to most of the projects,
even though it claims to. Almost seems like an argument that we don't want
to have though.
Either way, I know much more about this stuff than I did (which was very
little), so I'm happy.
--
- Mark
http://www.lucidimagination.com
Re: software grants
Posted by Yonik Seeley <yo...@lucidimagination.com>.
> I personally don't get what all the fuss is about.
I'm simply trying to avoid having rules I view as too strict (if
interpreted strictly) enshrined as policy.
> It's not hard to do a grant
>From the contributor side, it can be very, very, hard and can
potentially take a long time. The bigger the company, the harder it
can be.
Many may not pursue a contribution at all it if they thought one would
be required.
We shouldn't make contributions harder unless it's very necessary.
> when it lives somewhere else in public or was developed by a company or several individuals, it needs a grant.
That's way too strict.
> If it's just someone doing there thing, then it doesn't.
That's not cut and dried either - many companies assert IP rights to
creations made on employees own time, esp if they see it being
relevant to their business.
-Yonik
http://www.lucidimagination.com
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Re: software grants
Posted by Grant Ingersoll <gs...@apache.org>.
From http://incubator.apache.org/ip-clearance/index.html
"One of the Incubator's roles is to ensure that proper attention is
paid to intellectual property. From time to time, an external codebase
is brought into the ASF that is not a separate incubating project but
still represents a substantial contribution that was not developed
within the ASF's source control system and on our public mailing
lists. "
Of course, the nitpicking is likely over the phrase "substantial
contribution".
I personally don't get what all the fuss is about. It's not hard to
do a grant and it protects us, the ASF and Lucene at the cost of
taking a little longer, so I think it makes sense to be conservative.
So, in my mind, when it lives somewhere else in public or was
developed by a company or several individuals, it needs a grant. If
it's just someone doing there thing, then it doesn't. Often times, it
is the case that the person donating the code indicates these things,
as was the case with the Query Parser from IBM.
On Jul 8, 2009, at 8:44 AM, Yonik Seeley wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 10:27 PM, Grant
> Ingersoll<gs...@apache.org> wrote:
>> I think it is pretty clear that when the code lives in the public
>> somewhere
>> else (i.e. source forge or Google code, etc.) it needs to go
>> through a
>> grant.
>
> It's not clear to me... I think it's just another factor to consider.
> It also matters how big of a body of code it is, how many people
> developed it over how long, what licenses were used over it's
> development history, etc. Just because someone may make a patch or
> feature available on github first does not mean a software grant is
> automatically needed.
>
> -Yonik
> http://www.lucidimagination.com
>
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Re: software grants
Posted by Yonik Seeley <yo...@lucidimagination.com>.
On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 10:27 PM, Grant Ingersoll<gs...@apache.org> wrote:
> I think it is pretty clear that when the code lives in the public somewhere
> else (i.e. source forge or Google code, etc.) it needs to go through a
> grant.
It's not clear to me... I think it's just another factor to consider.
It also matters how big of a body of code it is, how many people
developed it over how long, what licenses were used over it's
development history, etc. Just because someone may make a patch or
feature available on github first does not mean a software grant is
automatically needed.
-Yonik
http://www.lucidimagination.com
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Re: software grants
Posted by Grant Ingersoll <gs...@apache.org>.
I think it is pretty clear that when the code lives in the public
somewhere else (i.e. source forge or Google code, etc.) it needs to go
through a grant. Likewise, it is often the best approach when a whole
code dump from a company or individual is brought in. Agreed, it is a
bit weird where the bar is set and it is not always obvious when the
threshold is met. So, there are a few hard and fast rules that apply
and there are a whole lot of gray areas. Same goes for checking the
box on JIRA vs. filling out a CLA or a CCLA.
The bottom line is, the grant is there for our protection as well as
the group donating. I'd rather be conservative and go the extra mile
and know that Lucene is protected when it is in doubt. It is easy to
fill out on our end and it forces the company donating to actually
think about it. The delay is almost always on the donator side.
That being said, I'm not particularly concerned about Trie, for the
record.
On Jul 7, 2009, at 10:05 AM, Yonik Seeley wrote:
> Regarding the software grant debate in
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LUCENE-1567
> IMO, it's pretty subjective what needs a software grant, and I don't
> think we should throw up any hard'n'fast rules about it. The bottom
> line is that the PMC/committers are responsible for IP oversight for
> everything committed.
>
> Looking at past software grants from other projects, the bar looks to
> be pretty high before projects typically go through it.
>
>
> -Yonik
> http://www.lucidimagination.com
>
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