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Posted to general@incubator.apache.org by Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org> on 2014/11/13 11:18:29 UTC
IP clearance clarification: copyright notices
Hi,
In the vote thread about [1] a question came up about the following
clause, from our IP clearance form:
> Check and make sure that the files that have been donated have been
> updated to reflect the new ASF copyright.
I think this actually covers two distinct things:
1) Moving any existing non-Apache copyright notices to a NOTICE file,
if the owner of the donated code wants that, or otherwise removing
them or making them smaller to avoid bloating the code with multiple
copyright notices., if possible. All done by whoever donates the code
- as per the "Should a project move non-ASF copyright notices from
Apache source files to the NOTICE file?" section in [2], we don't want
to that ourselves.
2) Adding Apache copyright/license headers where required
IMO there's no need for 2) to happen before the donation, that just
has to happen before the first release of that code.
Do people agree? Shall we reformulate that requirement to better
express that it's only 1) that's relevant before accepting the donated
code?
-Bertrand
[1] http://incubator.apache.org/ip-clearance/sling-sightly-xss.html
[2] http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html
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Re: IP clearance clarification: copyright notices
Posted by Marvin Humphrey <ma...@rectangular.com>.
On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 1:13 AM, Bertrand Delacretaz
<bd...@apache.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 7:32 PM, Alex Harui <ah...@adobe.com> wrote:
>> ...Copyright law, AIUI, prevents the receiving project from moving copyrights
>> without the copyright owner’s permission. Thus, if the donor has time to
>> insert Apache headers and move copyrights to NOTICE, that is very helpful,
>> but if the donor is short on time, he can give someone in the receiving
>> project permission to do so....
>
> Very good point, so for my point 1) above ("moving any existing
> non-Apache copyright notices to a NOTICE file") we could clarify that
> this needs to be done either by the donators before submitting their
> code, or by us with written permission from them.
>
> With people's comments here it looks like we need to clarify that
> clause indeed, I'll wait a bit for other opinions before doing that.
The two legal imperatives are:
1. Any code we host must at all times be legal to distribute.
2. Only the copyright owner or their authorized agent may modify copyright
notices.
In addition, there is the policy imperative that individual ALv2 source files
must eventually contain our ASF-specific header, and the related social/policy
imperative that such files must not contain copyright notices.
An important relaxation applies during the quarantine period:
1. While imported code must at all times be legal for us to distribute, it
need not adhere to our policies. For example, it may contain GPL headers.
So long as the task of modifying headers and copyright notices gets done
correctly, technically it doesn't matter whether it happens prior to the
first commit or immediately following. I have a mild preference for capturing
such changes in version control, though, so that they may be reviewed more
easily by the PMC and documented for posterity.
Marvin Humphrey
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Re: IP clearance clarification: copyright notices
Posted by Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>.
Hi Alex,
On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 7:32 PM, Alex Harui <ah...@adobe.com> wrote:
> ...Copyright law, AIUI, prevents the receiving project from moving copyrights
> without the copyright owner’s permission. Thus, if the donor has time to
> insert Apache headers and move copyrights to NOTICE, that is very helpful,
> but if the donor is short on time, he can give someone in the receiving
> project permission to do so....
Very good point, so for my point 1) above ("moving any existing
non-Apache copyright notices to a NOTICE file") we could clarify that
this needs to be done either by the donators before submitting their
code, or by us with written permission from them.
With people's comments here it looks like we need to clarify that
clause indeed, I'll wait a bit for other opinions before doing that.
-Bertrand
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Re: IP clearance clarification: copyright notices
Posted by Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>.
Hi,
On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 3:39 PM, Stian Soiland-Reyes
<so...@cs.manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
(about the "quarantine" folder)
> ...good idea If you do the internal area, I would ensure it is not
> publicly visible to non-apache.org users then...
That's not needed IMO, as long as we don't release the code it's fine
to have code in our svn/git repositories that's not fully ready in
terms of license headers etc.
I see putting those things under a "quarantine" folder only as a
warning to the PMC that such code shouldn't be released as is.
-Bertrand
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Re: IP clearance clarification: copyright notices
Posted by Stian Soiland-Reyes <so...@cs.manchester.ac.uk>.
Right, good idea If you do the internal area, I would ensure it is not
publicly visible to non-apache.org users then. In Github we can get
away with it as it is a bit cowboy land (most small projects don't
even state their license!!).. but you wouldn't want to end up with
projects that live too long in Apache Incubator quarantine space! :)
On 14 November 2014 09:15, Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 11:14 PM, Stian Soiland-Reyes
> <so...@cs.manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
>> For our incubator project (Taverna), we saw the need to reorganize our
>> current git repositories...
>> We therefore have made a separate staging area on Github, and then
>> basically we will move from github.com/taverna/* to
>> github.com/taverna-incubator/* step by step....
>
> Ok, that resonates with the "quarantine space" idea, he you did that
> externally but we can also suggest an internal quarantine are (which
> might be just a folder with this name) when code that's not fully
> cleaned up is imported.
>
> -Bertrand
>
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--
Stian Soiland-Reyes, myGrid team
School of Computer Science
The University of Manchester
http://soiland-reyes.com/stian/work/ http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9842-9718
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Re: IP clearance clarification: copyright notices
Posted by Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>.
Hi,
On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 11:14 PM, Stian Soiland-Reyes
<so...@cs.manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
> For our incubator project (Taverna), we saw the need to reorganize our
> current git repositories...
> We therefore have made a separate staging area on Github, and then
> basically we will move from github.com/taverna/* to
> github.com/taverna-incubator/* step by step....
Ok, that resonates with the "quarantine space" idea, he you did that
externally but we can also suggest an internal quarantine are (which
might be just a folder with this name) when code that's not fully
cleaned up is imported.
-Bertrand
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Re: IP clearance clarification: copyright notices
Posted by Stian Soiland-Reyes <so...@cs.manchester.ac.uk>.
I think it's good to be flexible here depending on the project's
needs. A fresh project might need more help that is easiest to achieve
after transitioning the code to Apache.
Some of the terminology of the incubator assumes the incubator project
is showing up on the Apache doorstep with a USB key full of
source-code that have never before been on the Internet - this might
need some updating to also cater for the modern reality of distributed
and ad-hoc collaboration on open source using tools like
git/mercurial, Github and Bitbucket.
Being picky about "the first commit after incubation" seems a bit daft
- after all a source code import should include the full history, and
that historical source-code would most likely not have the "right"
copyright/license headers. The hard deadline must be for the first
release, though.
For our incubator project (Taverna), we saw the need to reorganize our
current git repositories (which were a bit too numerous) as part of
the incubation process.
We therefore have made a separate staging area on Github, and then
basically we will move from github.com/taverna/* to
github.com/taverna-incubator/* step by step. Another reason why we
have to do this is that requesting additional git repositores at
git.apache.org is a bit more heavyweight compared to [New repository]
button on Github - so we must get the repository names etc. right to
start with.
But this also allows us to sort out bureaucratic things without
affecting the existing repositories, which are still in daily use (in
preparing a "last non-Apache-release"). It is therefore not any
problem to change licenses, groupIds and copyrights within that
staging repository.
But that staging-incubation model would probably be too heavy for the
hobby projects that are growing up and just have a single repository,
or for large commercial projects which don't want to publish as
open-source until it is under Apache.
On 13 November 2014 18:32, Alex Harui <ah...@adobe.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 11/13/14, 2:18 AM, "Bertrand Delacretaz" <bd...@apache.org> wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>In the vote thread about [1] a question came up about the following
>>clause, from our IP clearance form:
>>
>>> Check and make sure that the files that have been donated have been
>>> updated to reflect the new ASF copyright.
>>
>>I think this actually covers two distinct things:
>>
>>1) Moving any existing non-Apache copyright notices to a NOTICE file,
>>if the owner of the donated code wants that, or otherwise removing
>>them or making them smaller to avoid bloating the code with multiple
>>copyright notices., if possible. All done by whoever donates the code
>>- as per the "Should a project move non-ASF copyright notices from
>>Apache source files to the NOTICE file?" section in [2], we don't want
>>to that ourselves.
>>
>>2) Adding Apache copyright/license headers where required
>>
>>IMO there's no need for 2) to happen before the donation, that just
>>has to happen before the first release of that code.
>>
>>Do people agree? Shall we reformulate that requirement to better
>>express that it's only 1) that's relevant before accepting the donated
>>code?
>
> Hi Bertrand,
>
> The way I’ve interpreted this is that the “donation” occurs when the donor
> submits the software grant and secretary records it. All the donor is
> saying by submitting the grant is “I’m ok with you having this list of
> things” and makes no guarantees that the list of things are acceptable to
> Apache. A friend can give me a gift of a food basket without realizing
> I’m allergic to one of the things in there.
>
> The IP clearance process is where the receiving project makes the list of
> things acceptable to Apache. It can toss out things that Apache is
> allergic to and do other preparations before it lands in an Apache repo.
> Maybe it can wait until first release or first commit, but IMO, I’ve been
> trying to make the headers right before it hits the repo by running RAT
> before committing.
>
> Copyright law, AIUI, prevents the receiving project from moving copyrights
> without the copyright owner’s permission. Thus, if the donor has time to
> insert Apache headers and move copyrights to NOTICE, that is very helpful,
> but if the donor is short on time, he can give someone in the receiving
> project permission to do so.
>
> So, IMO, there is no need for any copyright mucking before the donation is
> accepted, as long as there are people with the time and permission to muck
> with it after, but it sure helps. Flex did take a donation where I fixed
> up the headers for the donor because the donor was short on time and
> didn’t want to create another place to store a branch of the code with
> modified headers. The donor’s code was already on GitHub and it felt
> strange to have him change his headers in the public GitHub copy or one of
> its branches. So I got explicit written (email) permission and fixed up
> the headers myself before submitting the package for IP clearance.
>
> That’s my understanding based on what I think I learned from you and the
> Adobe legal folks.
>
> -Alex
>
--
Stian Soiland-Reyes, myGrid team
School of Computer Science
The University of Manchester
http://soiland-reyes.com/stian/work/ http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9842-9718
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Re: IP clearance clarification: copyright notices
Posted by Alex Harui <ah...@adobe.com>.
On 11/13/14, 2:18 AM, "Bertrand Delacretaz" <bd...@apache.org> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>In the vote thread about [1] a question came up about the following
>clause, from our IP clearance form:
>
>> Check and make sure that the files that have been donated have been
>> updated to reflect the new ASF copyright.
>
>I think this actually covers two distinct things:
>
>1) Moving any existing non-Apache copyright notices to a NOTICE file,
>if the owner of the donated code wants that, or otherwise removing
>them or making them smaller to avoid bloating the code with multiple
>copyright notices., if possible. All done by whoever donates the code
>- as per the "Should a project move non-ASF copyright notices from
>Apache source files to the NOTICE file?" section in [2], we don't want
>to that ourselves.
>
>2) Adding Apache copyright/license headers where required
>
>IMO there's no need for 2) to happen before the donation, that just
>has to happen before the first release of that code.
>
>Do people agree? Shall we reformulate that requirement to better
>express that it's only 1) that's relevant before accepting the donated
>code?
Hi Bertrand,
The way I’ve interpreted this is that the “donation” occurs when the donor
submits the software grant and secretary records it. All the donor is
saying by submitting the grant is “I’m ok with you having this list of
things” and makes no guarantees that the list of things are acceptable to
Apache. A friend can give me a gift of a food basket without realizing
I’m allergic to one of the things in there.
The IP clearance process is where the receiving project makes the list of
things acceptable to Apache. It can toss out things that Apache is
allergic to and do other preparations before it lands in an Apache repo.
Maybe it can wait until first release or first commit, but IMO, I’ve been
trying to make the headers right before it hits the repo by running RAT
before committing.
Copyright law, AIUI, prevents the receiving project from moving copyrights
without the copyright owner’s permission. Thus, if the donor has time to
insert Apache headers and move copyrights to NOTICE, that is very helpful,
but if the donor is short on time, he can give someone in the receiving
project permission to do so.
So, IMO, there is no need for any copyright mucking before the donation is
accepted, as long as there are people with the time and permission to muck
with it after, but it sure helps. Flex did take a donation where I fixed
up the headers for the donor because the donor was short on time and
didn’t want to create another place to store a branch of the code with
modified headers. The donor’s code was already on GitHub and it felt
strange to have him change his headers in the public GitHub copy or one of
its branches. So I got explicit written (email) permission and fixed up
the headers myself before submitting the package for IP clearance.
That’s my understanding based on what I think I learned from you and the
Adobe legal folks.
-Alex
Re: IP clearance clarification: copyright notices
Posted by jan i <ja...@apache.org>.
On 14 November 2014 21:38, David Nalley <da...@gnsa.us> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 5:18 AM, Bertrand Delacretaz
> <bd...@apache.org> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > In the vote thread about [1] a question came up about the following
> > clause, from our IP clearance form:
> >
> >> Check and make sure that the files that have been donated have been
> >> updated to reflect the new ASF copyright.
> >
> > I think this actually covers two distinct things:
> >
> > 1) Moving any existing non-Apache copyright notices to a NOTICE file,
> > if the owner of the donated code wants that, or otherwise removing
> > them or making them smaller to avoid bloating the code with multiple
> > copyright notices., if possible. All done by whoever donates the code
> > - as per the "Should a project move non-ASF copyright notices from
> > Apache source files to the NOTICE file?" section in [2], we don't want
> > to that ourselves.
> >
> > 2) Adding Apache copyright/license headers where required
> >
> > IMO there's no need for 2) to happen before the donation, that just
> > has to happen before the first release of that code.
> >
>
> > [2] http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html
>
>
> I agree with this.
> The FAQ at the bottom of [2] says that it applies to all releases
> occurring after $date.
> Source without ASF headers is not an issue until you release. (And
> indeed, many things that we don't release do not contain such
> headers.)
>
I am sorry, but I really do not understand why the release is THE moment.
If we wait to change the headers until a release, but do other changes in
the file before that, these changes are done with the old license, and as a
consequence, headers can only be changed with the written approval of the
original donator as well as the people who have made changes later
(independent whether or not they have filed a icla).....why do we want that
extra complication.
Remeber the license in the file precedes any cla the developer might or
might not have filed.
I agree that for files without changes a release is the latest moment.
rgds
jan I.
>
>
> 1) should be taken care of before the IP Clearance.
> As Marvin notes below, the inclusion of a header does not change its
> legal status, it merely is present for clarity (and because policy
> demands it in released files)
>
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Re: IP clearance clarification: copyright notices
Posted by David Nalley <da...@gnsa.us>.
On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 5:18 AM, Bertrand Delacretaz
<bd...@apache.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In the vote thread about [1] a question came up about the following
> clause, from our IP clearance form:
>
>> Check and make sure that the files that have been donated have been
>> updated to reflect the new ASF copyright.
>
> I think this actually covers two distinct things:
>
> 1) Moving any existing non-Apache copyright notices to a NOTICE file,
> if the owner of the donated code wants that, or otherwise removing
> them or making them smaller to avoid bloating the code with multiple
> copyright notices., if possible. All done by whoever donates the code
> - as per the "Should a project move non-ASF copyright notices from
> Apache source files to the NOTICE file?" section in [2], we don't want
> to that ourselves.
>
> 2) Adding Apache copyright/license headers where required
>
> IMO there's no need for 2) to happen before the donation, that just
> has to happen before the first release of that code.
>
> [2] http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html
I agree with this.
The FAQ at the bottom of [2] says that it applies to all releases
occurring after $date.
Source without ASF headers is not an issue until you release. (And
indeed, many things that we don't release do not contain such
headers.)
1) should be taken care of before the IP Clearance.
As Marvin notes below, the inclusion of a header does not change its
legal status, it merely is present for clarity (and because policy
demands it in released files)
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Re: IP clearance clarification: copyright notices
Posted by jan i <ja...@apache.org>.
On 13 November 2014 11:18, Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In the vote thread about [1] a question came up about the following
> clause, from our IP clearance form:
>
> > Check and make sure that the files that have been donated have been
> > updated to reflect the new ASF copyright.
>
> I think this actually covers two distinct things:
>
> 1) Moving any existing non-Apache copyright notices to a NOTICE file,
> if the owner of the donated code wants that, or otherwise removing
> them or making them smaller to avoid bloating the code with multiple
> copyright notices., if possible. All done by whoever donates the code
> - as per the "Should a project move non-ASF copyright notices from
> Apache source files to the NOTICE file?" section in [2], we don't want
> to that ourselves.
>
> 2) Adding Apache copyright/license headers where required
>
> IMO there's no need for 2) to happen before the donation, that just
> has to happen before the first release of that code.
>
I dont agree with that statement. I would very much prefer:
"that just has to happen as the first change (commit) to the files, and no
later than the first release".
In my opinion its important that all changes to the code happens after the
license header is in place.
>
> Do people agree? Shall we reformulate that requirement to better
> express that it's only 1) that's relevant before accepting the donated
> code?
>
agreed, with my little change.
rgds
jan I.
Ps. I like your idea of putting the original code in a quarantine area of
svn/git.
>
> -Bertrand
>
> [1] http://incubator.apache.org/ip-clearance/sling-sightly-xss.html
> [2] http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html
>
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>