confusion resolved over license text differences in source file comments

[Patrick Mueller <pm...@gmail.com>]

tl;dr - there are two different license texts for Apache that go in source
code

I discovered this week that there are actually two 'license comment' texts
that are added as comments to source code, for source code that is Apache
licensed.

This confused me a bit, but finally figured it out, figured I'd explain in
case anyone else is confused.

I've been making sure all the right apache license bits are in the weinre
code, but was confused the other day when comparing the source header
license in weinre to a non-Cordova file I'm hacking on, which also is
licensed Apache, but which is NOT part of an Apache project; something I
have up at GitHub (duh).

Here's what I use in weinre:

    Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
    or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
    distributed with this work for additional information
    regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
    to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
    "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
    with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at

      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

    Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
    software distributed under the License is distributed on an
    "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
    KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
    specific language governing permissions and limitations
    under the License.

Here's what I use in my non-Cordova file:

    Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]

    Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
    you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
    You may obtain a copy of the License at

       http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

    Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
    distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
    WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
    See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
    limitations under the License.

Similar, but different.

At first, I was worried that I was using the wrong header in weinre, since
I made the copyright header changes to weinre a while back.  Did I use the
wrong text somehow?  Was I going to have to redo all those comments??
Arghh!!

===========================================================
The answer is no.  I'm doing the right thing in both cases.
===========================================================

For files that are part of an Apache project (eg, weinre), use the first
one.  This is documented at the Apache src-headers doc [1].  Corroborated
by looking at a HTTPD source file [2].

My confusion was caused by the other, shorter license I use in non-Cordova
code. It's the right one as well, I guess, as it's lifted right from the
LICENSE file [3] that I put in the root of my non-Cordova projects, and
that we also should be using in our Cordova projects.  This 'shorter'
license text is what you use for Apache-licensed code which is not part of
an Apache project.

Perhaps I shouldn't be using Apache in my personal projects to begin with,
to avoid the confusion.  :-/  OTOH, I gotta use that
http://pmuellr.mit-license.org/ auto-licenser for something!

[1] http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html#headers
[2]
http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/httpd/httpd/trunk/server/apreq_cookie.c?revision=1220822&view=co
[3] http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html

-- 
Patrick Mueller
http://muellerware.org