License headers and NOTICE file

[Gian Merlino <gi...@apache.org>]

I am looking at sorting out our license headers and NOTICE file.

For license headers the only real question I have at this point is
https://github.com/apache/incubator-druid/issues/5835#issuecomment-404257393.
If anyone with experience in this sort of thing could chime in then that
would be very useful.

For NOTICE, it looks like
http://www.apache.org/dev/licensing-howto.html#overview-of-files governs
what the NOTICE file should contain. Here is our current one:
https://github.com/apache/incubator-druid/blob/master/NOTICE. It has the
following features,

1) Copyright notices up top for three major contributors.
2) A notice for each project where we've copied code directly into the
Druid codebase. They're all Apache licensed.

From reading the licensing-howto it seems like the file needs some tweaks.
A bolded principle in the guide is "Do not add anything to NOTICE which is
not legally required." The copyright notices for major contributors don't
seem necessary given they are all covered by SGA / CLAs. The howto also
says "If the dependency supplies a NOTICE file, its contents must be
analyzed and the relevant portions bubbled up into the top-level NOTICE
file." We haven't been doing that -- we have just been listing the projects
themselves.

For projects where we've copied code, and for which those projects don't
have a NOTICE, should we remove them completely from our NOTICE? And I
suppose we should double check that we have source files marked
appropriately in cases where they're copied from another project.

Is there anyone with more experience in writing NOTICE files that could
chime in with thoughts please?

Re: License headers and NOTICE file

[Julian Hyde <jh...@apache.org>]

Do your best with the NOTICE file. We will scrutinize it during the release process.

I know it seems impolite not to mention contributors and copied code in the NOTICE, but there is a good reason to keep its contents absolutely minimal. Downstream projects are required to reproduce the NOTICE file, therefore everything we put in it places a burden on those projects. 

Lastly note that a binary artifacts often include much more than a source release. If so, their NOTICE files may need to include extra things. To keep things simple, we strongly recommend that the first Apache release is source only. 

Julian
 

> On Jul 11, 2018, at 1:00 PM, Gian Merlino <gi...@apache.org> wrote:
> 
> I am looking at sorting out our license headers and NOTICE file.
> 
> For license headers the only real question I have at this point is
> https://github.com/apache/incubator-druid/issues/5835#issuecomment-404257393.
> If anyone with experience in this sort of thing could chime in then that
> would be very useful.
> 
> For NOTICE, it looks like
> http://www.apache.org/dev/licensing-howto.html#overview-of-files governs
> what the NOTICE file should contain. Here is our current one:
> https://github.com/apache/incubator-druid/blob/master/NOTICE. It has the
> following features,
> 
> 1) Copyright notices up top for three major contributors.
> 2) A notice for each project where we've copied code directly into the
> Druid codebase. They're all Apache licensed.
> 
> From reading the licensing-howto it seems like the file needs some tweaks.
> A bolded principle in the guide is "Do not add anything to NOTICE which is
> not legally required." The copyright notices for major contributors don't
> seem necessary given they are all covered by SGA / CLAs. The howto also
> says "If the dependency supplies a NOTICE file, its contents must be
> analyzed and the relevant portions bubbled up into the top-level NOTICE
> file." We haven't been doing that -- we have just been listing the projects
> themselves.
> 
> For projects where we've copied code, and for which those projects don't
> have a NOTICE, should we remove them completely from our NOTICE? And I
> suppose we should double check that we have source files marked
> appropriately in cases where they're copied from another project.
> 
> Is there anyone with more experience in writing NOTICE files that could
> chime in with thoughts please?


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