public domain license header found when doing rat:check with 22 branch.

[Shawn Jiang <ge...@gmail.com>]

https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/geronimo/server/branches/2.2/plugins/concurrent/geronimo-concurrent-core/src/main/java/org/apache/geronimo/concurrent/harmony

FutureTask.java
ThreadPoolExecutor.java
RejectedExecutionHandler.java


I could found following license head instead of ASL in the source code above.
/*
 * Written by Doug Lea with assistance from members of JCP JSR-166
 * Expert Group and released to the public domain, as explained at
 * http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain
 */

Can anyone suggest if we should do something with these source code ?




For now,  I added following info in our
22branch\framework\configs\geronimo-boilerplate\src\main\underlay\contents\LICENSE
file to cover them.   But I'm not sure if it's the right way to handle
this case.

=========================================================================
==  public domain License                                                    ==
=========================================================================
The person or persons who have associated work with this document (the
"Dedicator" or "Certifier") hereby
either (a) certifies that, to the best of his knowledge, the work of
authorship identified is in the public domain
 of the country from which the work is published, or (b) hereby
dedicates whatever copyright the dedicators
 holds in the work of authorship identified below (the "Work") to the
public domain. A certifier, moreover,
 dedicates any copyright interest he may have in the associated work,
and for these purposes, is described as
 a "dedicator" below.

A certifier has taken reasonable steps to verify the copyright status
of this work. Certifier recognizes
that his good faith efforts may not shield him from liability if in
fact the work certified is not in the public domain.

Dedicator makes this dedication for the benefit of the public at large
and to the detriment of the Dedicator's
heirs and successors. Dedicator intends this dedication to be an overt
act of relinquishment in perpetuity of
all present and future rights under copyright law, whether vested or
contingent, in the Work. Dedicator
understands that such relinquishment of all rights includes the
relinquishment of all rights to enforce
(by lawsuit or otherwise) those copyrights in the Work.

Dedicator recognizes that, once placed in the public domain, the Work
may be freely reproduced, distributed,
transmitted, used, modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited by
anyone for any purpose, commercial or
non-commercial, and in any way, including by methods that have not yet
been invented or conceived.


3 classes(FutureTask.java,ThreadPoolExecutor.java,
RejectedExecutionHandler.java in ) in following artifact are covered
by the above public domain License:
./repository/org/apache/geronimo/modules/geronimo-concurrent-core/2.2.1/geronimo-concurrent-core-2.2.1.jar

-- 
Shawn

Re: public domain license header found when doing rat:check with 22 branch.

[Kevan Miller <ke...@gmail.com>]

On Nov 30, 2010, at 4:17 AM, Shawn Jiang wrote:

> https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/geronimo/server/branches/2.2/plugins/concurrent/geronimo-concurrent-core/src/main/java/org/apache/geronimo/concurrent/harmony
> 
> FutureTask.java
> ThreadPoolExecutor.java
> RejectedExecutionHandler.java
> 
> 
> I could found following license head instead of ASL in the source code above.
> /*
> * Written by Doug Lea with assistance from members of JCP JSR-166
> * Expert Group and released to the public domain, as explained at
> * http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain
> */
> 
> Can anyone suggest if we should do something with these source code ?

Hi Shawn,
Good question. 

First, in general, creative commons copyright-only dedication is a valid source license for an Apache project -- http://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#category-a . More specifically, see http://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#concurrent . So, those source files are fine from a legal perspective.

Next question is how should we handle the licensing? Our choices are:

1) Treat the Copyright-Only Dedication as a license. Or,
2) License the files under AL2.

Unless we've altered the source (beyond package rename), I think we should do 1).

Since these files are in our source tree (and not included from a binary dependency), we should license in two places: 1) the boilerplate underlay LICENSE (this handles our binary distributions) and 2) server/branches/2.2/LICENSE (this handles our source distribution).

--kevan