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Posted to dev@avalon.apache.org by Niclas Hedhman <ni...@hedhman.org> on 2004/10/03 05:50:25 UTC
Breaking the Silence - Future of Merlin/Metro
Hi everyone,
I have been busy behind the scenes, working out the final steps with the
Board. All the kudos to Stefano Mazzocchi for his patience and perseverence
in this matter, despite a very busy schedule privately and within the ASF.
Here is the *intent*;
* The Merlin/Metro team intends to *move* the project to its own home outside
of the ASF, under the Digital Product Meta Library (dpml.net) domain name.
* The current and future Merlin codebase will be released into the Public
Domain, as part of the new community building strategy.
* The team has formulated a new community building strategy, initially called
Open Participation Software, where in a nutshell we bring Wiki to Code
development.
* Bring the dpml.net up and running to a point where we can support existing
users, i.e. source repository fully in order and mailing lists operational,
prior to making public announcements on users@avalon.apache.org
Now, if things just where that simple :o)
There are certain practical details, which have been raised by individual
Board members during this discussion, some being fairly simple in nature
other much more complex. Since the discussion with the Board took place,
additional information regarding CLA and ASL has also made the situation more
complex and raised additional issues. I have listed these issues below, with
a proposed solution to each ( "Don't tell me the problems, bring me the
solution." )
Issue; The Board can not release the codebase to the Public Domain, as it does
not own it. It *can* and is willing to grant an even more liberal license for
some legal entity, an organization or an individual. That license would
approve that the ASL is removed from the code. However, Copyright ownership
must then be re-established in the said work, and not compatible with our
upcoming strategy of Public Domain software.
Proposed Solution; The Board is not made part of the active process. The owner
of the Copyright can release/disclaim the ownership and place the codebase
into the Public Domain. AFAIU, that would then supercede the CLA, as the work
then no longer has any ownership, incl the contributor's.
Issue; The codebase can not (and will not) use the org.apache package name
space.
Proposed Solution; I refactor the codebase to new package names in the Avalon
source repository under a new branch. This branch will also contain exactly
the codebase in question, for everyone's review. The codebase in that branch
is what is released into the Public Domain.
Issue; Each piece of code written is *owned* by the original contributor, and
he/she *must* explicitly disclaim that ownership, for it to go to the Public
Domain.
Proposed Solution; We will identify each contributor throughout the said
codebase, and ask for such release of their work to the Public Domain. IF
someone does not want to do this, that piece of contribution will be removed
and the consequences will be dealt with later outside the ASF. Initial
non-conclusive inventory shows the following people outside the initiating
group being involved;
- akarasulu, Alex Karasulu
- cziegeler, Carsten Ziegeler
- farra, Aaron Farr
- hammett, Hamilton Verissimo de Oliveira
- leosimons, Leo Simons
<these individuals are CCed to be introduced to what is going on>
The extent of these contributions has not been established, but is
*relatively* small, and I hope the named individuals will co-operate without
it being necessary to dig that up.
Issue; There is an additional related concern that CVS moves has erased
history and that there is code that has been copied from older Avalon
packages, to new locations, either in full (not too hard) or as snippets.
Proposed Solution; We know where such code comes from, and would like to
extend the request for release to the Public Domain for such parts, from
these contributors. Without pinpointing the exact pieces, we don't know at
this point who the additional contributors are, but we can expect that the
following, among others, will surface;
- bloritsch, Berin Loritsch
- donaldp, Peter Donald
- hammant, Paul Hammant
- jefft, Jeff Turner
- leosutic, Leo Sutic
- proyal, Peter Royal
Issue; This has not been done before. We and the members of the board are not
certain about a due process.
Proposed Solution; The proposal I am making is to let this be an affair
between each of the individual contributors. We will all agree on releasing
it to the Public Domain, as I think we are entitled to. The ASF will not be
required to take any action.
Issue; The Board has raised a concern that this will send the wrong message to
the rest of the ASF. The Board has no principal objection that the original
contributors' wish to release to Public Domain is granted, just that the
rationale behind the decision can not be misinterpreted by the rest of the
ASF.
Proposed Solution; At the public announcement, a full explaination of the
situation must be issued and very clear about what is happening and why.
Additionally, if the Board is not required to do anything, and all the
Copyright issues are solved at the contributor level, the ASF itself has not
done anything at all.
I hope with this mail to start a process with basically the following steps;
1. Creation of a branch in the Avalon SVN repository to include the codebase
intended to be released into the Public Domain.
2. Refactoring of such codebase to;
- Removal of the ASL headers.
- Adding a Public Domain marker.
- Change of package names.
3. Each contributor is requested to commit a statement where they release the
ownership of their parts in the codebase of this branch into the Public
Domain. A template will be provided.
4. Everyone is invited to review the codebase.
5. The Avalon PMC will be requested to inform the Board and issue a public
announcement.
6. The Metro adventure begins.
I think we can have something much more solid in a week - and that be part of
a bigger announcement - for the moment we simply want to get the news out
that something big is happening.
Cheers
Niclas Hedhman
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Re: Breaking the Silence - Future of Merlin/Metro
Posted by Niclas Hedhman <ni...@hedhman.org>.
On Monday 04 October 2004 09:21, Peter Donald wrote:
> In short;
> * Public Domain bad as no disclaim liability
> * "My" code is in Merlin
> * "My" code derived from other Apachde code
> * "My" code a combined work
> * Apache Board need to approve the "Public Domain"'ing of work anyways
> * I care little for Merlin developers
Without further due and argument, I'm obliged to retract our proposed Public
Domain strategy. We have to go back to the drawing board for a sustainable
model and look forward to resolving this rapidly.
Cheers
Niclas
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Re: Breaking the Silence - Future of Merlin/Metro
Posted by Peter Donald <pe...@realityforge.org>.
Hi,
I don't whats going on in Avalon land and to be honest I don't really
care. I would guess that nothing has really changed in the two years or
so since I was last involved and I guess that is sad but to be expected
given the personalities. Merlin did contain material that was derived
from works that I had copyright on and if that is still the case (which
I expect it is) then this could be a problem.
I don't want to release anything into the public domain as that would
make it impossible to disclaim any liability. Even if that was not the
case there was large chunks of code that were derived from code in other
places around Apache (ie Tomcat4/Catalina) and thus it was a combined
work with other copyright owners. At a bare minimum Craig McClanahan
(sp?) would also need to be approached. However as the work was combined
at Apache you would need to get the approval of the Apache Board or
whoever as legally I was using works licensed works off Apache rather
than directly from Craig. This will be required for any artefact that
has ever had multiple people work on it. Even if all this was fine and
dandy I don't think I would actually go out of my way to help the Merlin
guys given how nasty and unpleasant they have previously been towards
me. I assume they must be continuing the duplicitious, manipulative and
aggresive practices if they are no longer wanted at Apache.
In short;
* Public Domain bad as no disclaim liability
* "My" code is in Merlin
* "My" code derived from other Apachde code
* "My" code a combined work
* Apache Board need to approve the "Public Domain"'ing of work anyways
* I care little for Merlin developers
My suggestion would be to just fork the code elsewhere under the current
license and continue working over there.
Cheers,
Peter Donald
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Re: Breaking the Silence - Future of Merlin/Metro
Posted by Niclas Hedhman <ni...@hedhman.org>.
On Sunday 03 October 2004 20:22, Paul Hammant wrote:
> I think that Apache SCM is not the place for projects (albeit a branch)
> that are not marked appropriately as Apache's. Better to do this outside
> Apache, and make source zips (in lieu of public CVS) available as the
> work nears completion.
Can easily be done in this way, if that is what it takes. I have no strong
opinion in the matter.
Niclas
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Re: Breaking the Silence - Future of Merlin/Metro
Posted by Paul Hammant <Pa...@Hammant.org>.
Niclas,
>I hope with this mail to start a process with basically the following steps;
>
>1. Creation of a branch in the Avalon SVN repository to include the codebase
>intended to be released into the Public Domain.
>
>2. Refactoring of such codebase to;
> - Removal of the ASL headers.
> - Adding a Public Domain marker.
> - Change of package names.
>
>
>
I think that Apache SCM is not the place for projects (albeit a branch)
that are not marked appropriately as Apache's. Better to do this outside
Apache, and make source zips (in lieu of public CVS) available as the
work nears completion.
- Paul
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Re: Breaking the Silence - Future of Merlin/Metro
Posted by Leo Simons <ls...@jicarilla.org>.
Niclas Hedhman wrote:
<snip/>
> Issue; Each piece of code written is *owned* by the original contributor, and
> he/she *must* explicitly disclaim that ownership, for it to go to the Public
> Domain.
<snip/>
> - leosimons, Leo Simons
<snip/>
I don't think I ever contributed anything but javadocs to the merlin
codebase directly, which I'm happy to release to the public domain.
There might be stuff I wrote that came from elsewhere (like phoenix),
I'll go and see about that when you finish your migration source tree.
(note I trimmed the CC list down a little...)
- Leo
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Re: Breaking the Silence - Future of Merlin/Metro
Posted by J Aaron Farr <fa...@apache.org>.
Niclas Hedhman wrote:
> Warranty is not a problem;
> As Sun expresses it; "This module, both source code and documentation, is in
> the Public Domain, and comes with NO WARRANTY."
>
> That's IT. A single line.
see next comment.
> Now you are somewhat confusing License from Ownership, and things are getting
> 'icky'. I am not revoking a license to the ASF, I am releasing my ownership
> of the asset. And since the Public Domain concept allows anybody to do
> anything, whatsoever, I (also IANAL) can't see any problem. Compare this with
> an EULA of a product that I by, only to find out 3 months later it is
> Free-of-Charge.
I'm not saying it has to be a problem. I'm just brainstorming here,
tossing out ideas that might be issues to consider. I'm absolutely not
trying to bring up roadblocks.
> How is that today, irregardless of this effort? One could argue that we are
> not allowed to apply patches from users, without them submitting the CLA.
> Feel free to bring it up with the Board separately.
Actually this is covered in the ASL 2.0 but not in ASL 1.0. So it was
an issue and was brought up before. I would only be really concerned if
there was some large or significant patch submitted by a non-committer
before 2.0 licensing. I don't think there are any for Merlin but I
wanted to bring it up in case someone else remembers or knows.
Again, just brainstorming.
jaaron
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Re: Breaking the Silence - Future of Merlin/Metro
Posted by Niclas Hedhman <ni...@hedhman.org>.
On Monday 04 October 2004 00:10, J Aaron Farr wrote:
> One initial thought: public domain has generally not been recommended
> due to potential liability issues. That is, even the most basic open
> source license disclaims any implied warranty. That might be important
> to the new Metro project. Or it might not. This is where getting some
> legal advice might be appropriate.
Warranty is not a problem;
As Sun expresses it; "This module, both source code and documentation, is in
the Public Domain, and comes with NO WARRANTY."
That's IT. A single line.
As for so called legal protection...
1. The ASF system is basically set up in a way that will perhaps confuse the
court enough, since ASF tries to indemnify the contributor, yet not the
creator nor the owner, just a licensee. This has been raised before in the
Incubator.
2. I think it has to be a pretty serious case for a corporation to go after
and sue an individual. In fact, when the evidence is overwhelming against
him/her, and (IMVHO) one should be responsible for one's action.
Whatever one do in the daily life, one can always be sued by someone else, and
*I* can't see the difference.
> Which means we as copyright owners cannot revoke our license grant to
> the ASF (ie- we can't remove it from the ASF). However, we can grant an
> additional license that either makes the work public domain (I think) or
> grants a license to the new DPML group (this I know is okay).
Now you are somewhat confusing License from Ownership, and things are getting
'icky'. I am not revoking a license to the ASF, I am releasing my ownership
of the asset. And since the Public Domain concept allows anybody to do
anything, whatsoever, I (also IANAL) can't see any problem. Compare this with
an EULA of a product that I by, only to find out 3 months later it is
Free-of-Charge.
> +1 for being cooperative.
Thanks!
> What about patches submitted over the mailing list from users?
How is that today, irregardless of this effort? One could argue that we are
not allowed to apply patches from users, without them submitting the CLA.
Feel free to bring it up with the Board separately.
Cheers
Niclas
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Re: Breaking the Silence - Future of Merlin/Metro
Posted by J Aaron Farr <fa...@apache.org>.
Niclas Hedhman wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I have been busy behind the scenes, working out the final steps with the
> Board. All the kudos to Stefano Mazzocchi for his patience and perseverence
> in this matter, despite a very busy schedule privately and within the ASF.
>
> Here is the *intent*;
The intent is good and I agree with it. Let's see about making sure we
don't trip on any details.
One initial thought: public domain has generally not been recommended
due to potential liability issues. That is, even the most basic open
source license disclaims any implied warranty. That might be important
to the new Metro project. Or it might not. This is where getting some
legal advice might be appropriate.
> Issue; The Board can not release the codebase to the Public Domain, as it does
> not own it. It *can* and is willing to grant an even more liberal license for
> some legal entity, an organization or an individual. That license would
> approve that the ASL is removed from the code. However, Copyright ownership
> must then be re-established in the said work, and not compatible with our
> upcoming strategy of Public Domain software.
> Proposed Solution; The Board is not made part of the active process. The owner
> of the Copyright can release/disclaim the ownership and place the codebase
> into the Public Domain. AFAIU, that would then supercede the CLA, as the work
> then no longer has any ownership, incl the contributor's.
Disclaimer: IANAL
The CLA states:
2. Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of
this Agreement, You hereby grant to the Foundation and to
recipients of software distributed by the Foundation a perpetual,
worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable
copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of,
publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your
Contributions and such derivative works.
Which means we as copyright owners cannot revoke our license grant to
the ASF (ie- we can't remove it from the ASF). However, we can grant an
additional license that either makes the work public domain (I think) or
grants a license to the new DPML group (this I know is okay). This
should be reviewed by someone with a better understanding of
intellectual property.
> Issue; Each piece of code written is *owned* by the original contributor, and
> he/she *must* explicitly disclaim that ownership, for it to go to the Public
> Domain.
> Proposed Solution; We will identify each contributor throughout the said
> codebase, and ask for such release of their work to the Public Domain. IF
> someone does not want to do this, that piece of contribution will be removed
> and the consequences will be dealt with later outside the ASF. Initial
> non-conclusive inventory shows the following people outside the initiating
> group being involved;
> - akarasulu, Alex Karasulu
> - cziegeler, Carsten Ziegeler
> - farra, Aaron Farr
> - hammett, Hamilton Verissimo de Oliveira
> - leosimons, Leo Simons
+1 for being cooperative.
> Issue; There is an additional related concern that CVS moves has erased
> history and that there is code that has been copied from older Avalon
> packages, to new locations, either in full (not too hard) or as snippets.
> Proposed Solution; We know where such code comes from, and would like to
> extend the request for release to the Public Domain for such parts, from
> these contributors. Without pinpointing the exact pieces, we don't know at
> this point who the additional contributors are, but we can expect that the
> following, among others, will surface;
What about patches submitted over the mailing list from users?
> I think we can have something much more solid in a week - and that be part of
> a bigger announcement - for the moment we simply want to get the news out
> that something big is happening.
Thank you for your efforts on this.
jaaron
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