Mentor SGA Question

[Gregory Nutt <sp...@gmail.com>]

Hi, Mentors,

The incubator-nuttx project contains only  a small amount of 3rd part 
software.  The incubator-nuttx-apps repository contains considerably 
more.  This is not raw, 3rd party code but highly modified and highly 
adapted code.  Third party copyrights are retained out of respect 
respect the Copyrights of the original code that the customized code 
derived from.

I am not sure of the status of the existing 3rd party code.  We have 
talked about getting SGAs for all 3rd party code or of just 
grand-fathering the older changes in.  There is time to resolve all of 
that and that is not the question at hand.

I was wondering about new 3rd party code coming into the repository.  As 
an Apache (podling) project, can we continue to bring in 3rd party code 
willy-nilly?  Or do we need SGAs first?

Greg

Re: Mentor SGA Question

[Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>]

Hi,

> The incubator-nuttx project contains only  a small amount of 3rd part software.  The incubator-nuttx-apps repository contains considerably more.  This is not raw, 3rd party code but highly modified and highly adapted code.  Third party copyrights are retained out of respect respect the Copyrights of the original code that the customized code derived from.

Unless the changes are significant I leave them under the original license. Changes like reformatting or stylistic changes are not significant ones. See [1].

> I am not sure of the status of the existing 3rd party code. 

Version control history might be able to help you with the answer to that.

> We have talked about getting SGAs for all 3rd party code or of just grand-fathering the older changes in.  combat

If it stays as 3rd party code and is under a compatible license there no need for a software grant. If you want it to be ALv2 then there would been to be a grant.

> I was wondering about new 3rd party code coming into the repository.  As an Apache (podling) project, can we continue to bring in 3rd party code willy-nilly? 

It’s OK to do so, but the 3rd party community should be respected, even if the license (say MIT or BSD) allows it, we don’t want to be seen at being involve in hostile forks. In general it’s nice to ask for permission to use rather than just taking, again even if the license allows it. If possible it’s also preferable to just use that 3rd party code as a dependancy and not make it part of the NuttX repo.

> Or do we need SGAs first?

If it 3rd party code there no need for a SGA as long as the original headers stay on it.

Thanks,
Justin

1. https://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html#3party