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Posted to general@gump.apache.org by Stefano Mazzocchi <st...@apache.org> on 2004/03/12 15:18:34 UTC
Re: Clarifying some licensing issues for Apache developers
Brian Behlendorf wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Mar 2004, J Aaron Farr wrote:
>
>>However, mx4j is a good example because apparently it includes code licensed
>>under the Jetty and Jython licenses [2]. While I am not intimately familiar
>>with mx4j, this may mean that the total legal effect of using mx4j is not
>>contained within the mx4j license alone, but is in fact a combination of the
>>terms of the three licenses. Since this combination may in fact be more
>>restrictive than the terms in the mx4j license alone, the library may not be in
>>the clear to be used by ASF projects. To confirm this, one would need to
>>investigate all three licenses, understand which parts of mx4j fall outside of
>>its own license, and then come to a decision on how the library can be used in
>>the ASF.
>>
>>It is exactly this sort of confusion the ASF would like to avoid.
>
>
> Thank you, jaaron, for articulating this. Indeed, this is what we'd like
> to avoid - confusion and surprises for ourselves, as well as confusion and
> surprises for those who use and redistribute Apache software.
FYI, Gumpy (the python version of gump) is currently checking for the
existance of the license file in all packages.
It would be possible and rather simple to add a list of identifiers for
the various licenses (maybe using the OSI urls as URIs?) to the project
metadata descriptors in the gump repository and then write a rule engine
that identifies potential legal issues with the combination of those
identifiers.
This would allow, for example, the licensing committee to explore policy
changes and outline the legal impact of those changes to the various
legal dependencies in our tree.
It is also possible to *validate* those legal assertions by matching the
license file, therefore understand if a particular project is changing
his license overtime (gump deals with CVS directly!) which would trigger
not only an alarm of potential future issues for code dependencies but
also for legal dependencies.
Food for thought.
--
Stefano.
Re: Clarifying some licensing issues for Apache developers
Posted by "Adam R. B. Jack" <aj...@trysybase.com>.
From: "Stefano Mazzocchi" <st...@apache.org>
> [...]
> Food for thought.
Slick ideas, I love them...
regards
Adam
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Re: Clarifying some licensing issues for Apache developers
Posted by Stefano Mazzocchi <st...@apache.org>.
Brian Behlendorf wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Mar 2004, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
>
>>FYI, Gumpy (the python version of gump) is currently checking for the
>>existance of the license file in all packages.
>>
>>It would be possible and rather simple to add a list of identifiers for
>>the various licenses (maybe using the OSI urls as URIs?) to the project
>>metadata descriptors in the gump repository and then write a rule engine
>>that identifies potential legal issues with the combination of those
>>identifiers.
>
>
> Some sort of automated system for checking things sounds really cool,
> actually. Once policy is defined and accepted. :)
Awesome, we'll add it to the TODO list of the Gump project.
--
Stefano.
Re: Clarifying some licensing issues for Apache developers
Posted by Brian Behlendorf <br...@collab.net>.
On Fri, 12 Mar 2004, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
> FYI, Gumpy (the python version of gump) is currently checking for the
> existance of the license file in all packages.
>
> It would be possible and rather simple to add a list of identifiers for
> the various licenses (maybe using the OSI urls as URIs?) to the project
> metadata descriptors in the gump repository and then write a rule engine
> that identifies potential legal issues with the combination of those
> identifiers.
Some sort of automated system for checking things sounds really cool,
actually. Once policy is defined and accepted. :)
Brian
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Re: Clarifying some licensing issues for Apache developers
Posted by Stefano Mazzocchi <st...@apache.org>.
Dirk-Willem van Gulik wrote:
>
> On Mar 12, 2004, at 3:18 PM, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
>
>> It would be possible and rather simple to add a list of identifiers
>> for the various licenses (maybe using the OSI urls as URIs?) to the
>> project
>
>
> Aye - or use some of the URI pointers to (our own or OSI) defintiions in
> RDF as used by creative commons folks.
not sure I want to touch RDF just yet, as you know pretty well, it tends
to scare the crap out of people ;-)
Having unique identifiers would be good enough for a starting point.
So, suggestions? should we use OSI URLs as URI or come up with our own?
We could, later down the road, crystallize license combinatory logic
into an ontology. That would make soooo many people here at MIT/Harvard
soooo happy, but let's not start with flexibility syndrome but let's
just solve the problem we are having now, which is the explosion of
licensing dependencies.
If we go down this road, official support from the board in
communicating with OSI for this licensing identifying mechanism would be
extremely helpful.
Anyway, I think we just found the first application of semantic web
technologies for apache :-)
--
Stefano.
Re: Clarifying some licensing issues for Apache developers
Posted by Dirk-Willem van Gulik <di...@asemantics.com>.
On Mar 12, 2004, at 3:18 PM, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
> It would be possible and rather simple to add a list of identifiers
> for the various licenses (maybe using the OSI urls as URIs?) to the
> project
Aye - or use some of the URI pointers to (our own or OSI) defintiions
in RDF as used by creative commons folks.
Dw
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