Clean room policy

[Peter Donald <do...@apache.org>]

At 10:43  6/12/00 -0800, you wrote:
>On 12/6/00 5:42 PM, "Peter Donald" <do...@apache.org> wrote:
>
>> Well not about that but more due to legal thing. I would never touch
>> something that has Suns license attached.
>
>You must be referring to the javax.xml.* classes, right? 

Not all of them - just the 5-6 in javax.xml.parser.* but if you say it is
fine then I gonna upgrade a whole heap of projects to jaxp1.1 and claim you
represented sun and allowed it ;) (I been wanting to do it for ages instead
using custom factories ;-])

>> I thought Apache had a clean tree
>> policy - ie only Apache copyright source is allowed to exist in CVS.
>
>Apache only *works* on Apache copyright code. Our experience with code that
>we have to lean on is that we do what we can how we can. 

Okay - does that mean I can check in code that isn't owned by Apache. There
is a few - their licenses allow it and I am trying to clone behaviour in
their system. It is just taking forever because I have to do it by myself -
thou if I could put it in CVS someone else may pick up the banner ;)

It would also open up the oportunity for the log4j guys to put it in CVS
and gradually remove the IPL bits? I guess I was under a different
impression and I just told Ceki that Apache wouldn't accept IBM owned code
so he had to rewrite it but if not ...



Cheers,

Pete

*-----------------------------------------------------*
| "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, |
| and proving that there is no need to do so - almost |
| everyone gets busy on the proof."                   |
|              - John Kenneth Galbraith               |
*-----------------------------------------------------*

Re: Clean room policy

[James Duncan Davidson <du...@x180.net>]

On 12/6/00 11:30 PM, "Peter Donald" <do...@apache.org> wrote:

> Not all of them - just the 5-6 in javax.xml.parser.* but if you say it is
> fine then I gonna upgrade a whole heap of projects to jaxp1.1 and claim you
> represented sun and allowed it ;) (I been wanting to do it for ages instead
> using custom factories ;-])

That particular email said it was fine in that particular context on that
day. If you want to interpret my message that day -- then go get it and
interpret it.. I'm not redefining it here -- and today I'm making no such
statements representing Sun or as a Sun spokesperson.

Note well -- If I'm not using my Sun address (which I can toggle if I so
choose with a pull down in my mailer), then I'm most definitely not speaking
for Sun. I'm just me, myself, and I speaking as an Apache Developer and
maybe as an Apache VP in my Jakarta Chair role... But nothing related to
Sun.

> Okay - does that mean I can check in code that isn't owned by Apache. There
> is a few - their licenses allow it and I am trying to clone behaviour in
> their system. It is just taking forever because I have to do it by myself -
> thou if I could put it in CVS someone else may pick up the banner ;)

It's not encouraged and the story is murky, but there are several cases
where its done as long as the licenses aren't in conflict. For example,
expat is in the httpd tree.

> It would also open up the oportunity for the log4j guys to put it in CVS
> and gradually remove the IPL bits? I guess I was under a different
> impression and I just told Ceki that Apache wouldn't accept IBM owned code
> so he had to rewrite it but if not ...

In general I'd like to not see this happen much, even though it does happen,
and would rather see those bits that are not controlled by us in .jar files
in binary format where a source license doesn't even apply. Jon's practices
of just using .jars is much more sane from a legal standpoint than checking
in source code. I'm probably going to be encouraging the Crimson folks to do
this.

-- 
James Duncan Davidson                                        duncan@x180.net
                                                                  !try; do()