License and copyrighted code

["Tim T. Young" <Yo...@cat.com>]

I am preparing technical and business information to deliver to a
technology group
at my firm.  I know the issue of licensing and copyright will come up and
of course I
have read and studied the Apache license.  One question I know will be
asked is this:
How does the Apache process (with its commiters, etc) ensure
non-copyrighted code
from "someplace else" does not get into the distribution?

The probability of this happening is probably not statistically significant
but I need to
be able to point to facts that supports the statement that this will never
happen, ie my
opinion (even the opinion of all of the users on this list) would not
necessarily be enough
to convice this group that there is no risk of it happening.

I would appreciate any information on this subject.
Thank you,
Tim


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Re: License and copyrighted code

["Craig R. McClanahan" <cr...@apache.org>]

On Wed, 26 Jun 2002, Tim T. Young wrote:

> Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 10:44:25 -0500
> From: Tim T. Young <Yo...@cat.com>
> Reply-To: Struts Users Mailing List <st...@jakarta.apache.org>
> To: Struts Users Mailing List <st...@jakarta.apache.org>
> Subject: License and copyrighted code
>
>
> I am preparing technical and business information to deliver to a
> technology group
> at my firm.  I know the issue of licensing and copyright will come up and
> of course I
> have read and studied the Apache license.  One question I know will be
> asked is this:
> How does the Apache process (with its commiters, etc) ensure
> non-copyrighted code
> from "someplace else" does not get into the distribution?
>

Committers on Apache projects, among other things, agree to the the terms
of the Contributor License Agreement
<http://jakarta.apache.org/site/agreement.html>, which requires them to
assert that they have the legal rights to grant the specified license to
the code (that they contribute) to the Apache Software Foundation, which
is the legal owner of all the code.  It is primarily a matter of self
policing, but the process of becoming a committer is also a pretty high
barrier -- the other committers have to get to know you and trust you
before they are voted in.

In addition, the source code of every single CVS commit is mirrored to the
appropriate developer mailing list (STRUTS-DEV for Struts code).  There,
it can be reviewed for licensing problems (such as a company agreeing to
contribute code but forgetting to remove the old license first -- I've had
to clean up a few of those for my employer (Sun) on occasion) as well as
code quality.  So, it is not possible to "sneak" code in that is clearly
not licensed to Apache correctly.

> The probability of this happening is probably not statistically significant
> but I need to
> be able to point to facts that supports the statement that this will never
> happen, ie my
> opinion (even the opinion of all of the users on this list) would not
> necessarily be enough
> to convice this group that there is no risk of it happening.
>

There is no such thing as zero risk.  In practice, this hasn't been an
issue on the Apache projects I've been involved in (primarily Tomcat,
Struts, and Commons) over the last several years.

Having worked in both closed source and open source environments, I can
also see the relevance of assertions by some that closed source
development efforts are *more* susceptible to this exact problem than open
source ones, precisely because the open source community can review every
submission.  How do you know where your developers are getting the ideas
that they are embedding into your applications and products?

> I would appreciate any information on this subject.
> Thank you,
> Tim
>

Craig


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