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Posted to general@incubator.apache.org by Matthieu Riou <ma...@gmail.com> on 2007/08/01 17:40:25 UTC
Re: All licenses in a single file [WAS: Re: [VOTE] Publish the Woden M7b release]
On 7/31/07, Martin Cooper <ma...@apache.org> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > Actually I was wondering about this recommendation of having all (non
> > ASL)
> > license files for dependencies in a *single* LICENSE file. It seems to
> > me
> > that it's a maintenance nightmare when you have a lot of dependencies
> > (very
> > long file, you have to do a search to find anything, checking what could
> > be
> > missing takes a looong time). I'd rather have all the specific licenses
> > each
> > in there file reproduced side by side with the library the license is
> > applied on (with similar namings, i.e. dom4j-1.3.LICENSE) and a simple
> > pointer in the main LICENSE file
>
>
> From:
>
> http://www.apache.org/dev/apply-license.html#new
>
> "you should append their license(s) to the LICENSE file at the top of the
> distribution, or at least put a pointer in the LICENSE file to the
> third-party license"
>
> The second part of this should meet your needs. Yes, you still have to
> have a pointer in the LICENSE file to each license, but you're not going to
> get out of that without a lengthy discussion with the ASF legal team, if
> then.
>
Sounds a bit more reasonable, at least I can generate a list of pointers as
part of my release process and maintain distinct license files.
("licenses for each dependency library are
> > reproduced in the lib directory along with the library").
>
>
> That's not viable. As Niclas suggested, the target of all this is lawyers.
> They can't be expected to dig around in the distribution to find all the
> relevant licenses, and a clause such as you suggest gives no definitive
> means of determining whether or not all the relevant licenses have in fact
> been discovered.
>
It just seems a bit sub-optimal to have so many projects go through a long
and painful time to maintain a single lengthy file when lawyers willing to
check a distro could just send a single e-mail asking "could you give me an
exhaustive list of the licenses contained in your distribution?". As an
illustration, check this out:
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/geronimo/server/trunk/LICENSE.txt
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/servicemix/trunk/LICENSE
When you're releasing version n+1, making sure that no new dependency have
been forgotten in these files is challenging. In fact I'd argue that it's a
pretty good way to be sure that someday, something will be forgotten.
So I think for ODE we're going to do what I mentioned: include each specific
license file side by side with the library and add that pointer in the main
LICENSE file so that all licenses can be discovered from there. Hopefully
that's still an acceptable practice and it's going to save me at least half
a day for each release.
Anyway, thanks for the clarification and sorry for the rant :-)
Matthieu
--
> Martin Cooper
>
>
> So is there a legal justification behind this that I missed? And sorry if
> > I'm rehashing a subject that has already been discussed in the past :)
> >
> > Matthieu
> >
> > ...ant
> > >
> > > On 7/30/07, Graham Turrell (gmail) <gturrell@googlemail.com > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > The Woden incubator project is developing a WSDL 2.0 processor in
> > > > conjunction with efforts of the W3C to deliver the new WSDL
> > > > 2.0 specification. The Woden project team would like to ask the
> > > > Incubator PMC for approval to publish the Woden Milestone 7b release
> > to
> > > > support the
> > > > upcoming Apache WS Axis2 1.3 release.
> > > >
> > > > Could Incubator PMC members please vote by Wednesday 1st August.
> > > >
> > > > Woden M7b is an incremental release of Woden M7 which was released
> > on
> > > 19th
> > > > February 2007. M7b adds to M7 and M7a fixes delivered by JIRAs:
> > > >
> > > > * WODEN-33 DocumentationElement should extend NestedElement.
> > > > * WODEN-149 Update Woden with New WSDL 2.0 Assertions Numbers for
> > > > Proposed
> > > > Recommendation.
> > > > * WODEN-161 Style default from interface not applied to operations.
> >
> > > > * WODEN-165 SAX attribution in NOTICE file is not required.
> > > > * WODEN-168 OMXMLElementTest class incorrectly returning the
> > > > DOMXMLElementTest
> > > > class as its test suit.
> > > >
> > > > Also included is a fix to DOMWSDLReader to set base URI before
> > calling
> > > > XmlSchema.
> > > >
> > > > The Woden M7b release files are at:
> > > >
> > http://people.apache.org/~gturrell/woden/milestones/1.0M7b-incubating/<http://people.apache.org/%7Egturrell/woden/milestones/1.0M7b-incubating/>
> > > >
> > > > This build is based on revision 560591 at
> > > > http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/woden/branches/M7b/
> > > >
> > > > The results of the vote from the woden-dev list was:
> > > > Davanum Srinivas +1 (WSPMC, IPMC)
> > > > Deepal Jayasinghe +1
> > > > Thilina Gunarath +1
> > > > Jeremy Hughes +1 (WSPMC)
> > > > Graham Turrell +1
> > > > John Kaputin +1
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > >
> > > > Kind Regards,
> > > > Graham
> > > >
> > >
> >
>
>
Re: All licenses in a single file [WAS: Re: [VOTE] Publish the Woden M7b release]
Posted by Matthieu Riou <ma...@gmail.com>.
On 8/2/07, Robert Burrell Donkin <ro...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
> AIUI including full license text in the LICENSE file is preferable but
> isn't absolutely necessary. giving a pointer to the license should be
> ok.
>
> what would be very useful to me (and other folks who need to check the
> release) is if you could include the title of the license to save me
> time in tracking down each license.
We've graduated so you shouldn't need to check our distro (unless you feel
like, which would be nice) but I'll do that anyway :-) Thanks for the
clarification, I didn't think there would be so many lawyer inquiries.
Anyway we'll include clear and simple pointers.
Thanks!
Matthieu
- robert
>
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Re: All licenses in a single file [WAS: Re: [VOTE] Publish the Woden M7b release]
Posted by Robert Burrell Donkin <ro...@gmail.com>.
On 8/1/07, Matthieu Riou <ma...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/31/07, Martin Cooper <ma...@apache.org> wrote:
<snip>
> ("licenses for each dependency library are
> > > reproduced in the lib directory along with the library").
> >
> >
> > That's not viable. As Niclas suggested, the target of all this is lawyers.
> > They can't be expected to dig around in the distribution to find all the
> > relevant licenses, and a clause such as you suggest gives no definitive
> > means of determining whether or not all the relevant licenses have in fact
> > been discovered.
it's not just lawyers
it's important for other groups to be able to easily understand the licensing
it's important that apache people can easily and quickly exercise
oversight by checking that the licensing for the release is ok
it's important that downstream repackagers can easily and quickly
understand and check the licensing of the components of the release
> It just seems a bit sub-optimal to have so many projects go through a long
> and painful time to maintain a single lengthy file when lawyers willing to
> check a distro could just send a single e-mail asking "could you give me an
> exhaustive list of the licenses contained in your distribution?".
please remember that we're all volunteers here
this approach would add much more work to the already overstretched
legal group. rather than supplying the information needed once as part
of the distribution, the information would need to be provided many
times.
checking releases or answering questions from lawyers isn't fun.
there's a major shortage of willing volunteers. AIUI some other richer
foundations hire professional help.
> As an
> illustration, check this out:
>
> http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/geronimo/server/trunk/LICENSE.txt
> http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/servicemix/trunk/LICENSE
>
> When you're releasing version n+1, making sure that no new dependency have
> been forgotten in these files is challenging. In fact I'd argue that it's a
> pretty good way to be sure that someday, something will be forgotten.
the checking needs to be automated and it can be done
but i just don't have the cycles ATM and no one seems interested in stepping up
> So I think for ODE we're going to do what I mentioned: include each specific
> license file side by side with the library and add that pointer in the main
> LICENSE file so that all licenses can be discovered from there. Hopefully
> that's still an acceptable practice and it's going to save me at least half
> a day for each release.
AIUI including full license text in the LICENSE file is preferable but
isn't absolutely necessary. giving a pointer to the license should be
ok.
what would be very useful to me (and other folks who need to check the
release) is if you could include the title of the license to save me
time in tracking down each license.
- robert
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