FW: ASF Board Summary for February 18, 2004

[Cliff Schmidt <cl...@bea.com>]

XMLBeans Committers / Prospective Committers / Contributors, 

All committers should have already read this, but I thought I'd 
specifically point out a few things that are very relevant to 
XMLBeans.

See comments inline.  I've prefaced my comments with dorky labels
like "ACTION","OPTIONAL","INFO", to hopefully make it easy to 
separate stuff we might have to do from generally informative notes.

Cliff


Greg Stein wrote on Monday, February 23, 2004 4:19 AM:

> * In conjunction with the the discussion about relicensing and some
>   copyright issues, the Board is establishing an official policy in
>   this area:
> 
>   - each and every file must have exactly *one* Copyright line,
>     specifying The Apache Software Foundation. additional individual
>     or corporate copyrights are not allowed.

INFO: We've already complied with this.  

>     (of course, binary files or certain restrictively formatted files
>     cannot include the copyright and license, but the
>     copyright/license header should be in everything possible)

ACTION: I think this means that we need to add the copyright statement 
to XML files and any text files -- at the moment, I believe the 
copyright statements are primarily in .java files.  Can we preface each 
XML file with a comment that includes the same copyright statement we 
are putting on the .java files?  I know this is a pain since Eric just 
fixed the copyright statement on all the other files.

>   - for contributions of entire files/packages, it is permissible to
>     include a section saying something along the lines of "originally
>     written by ...". this text should occur *after* the copyright and
>     license header.

OPTIONAL: I had previously not gotten the impression that this was 
allowable. Instead, there is a similar line only in the NOTICE file.  
If a BEA person wants to bother adding "originally written by BEA 
Systems, Inc." after the copyright and license header, it seems like 
the would be okay.  I know it would have been nice to know this before 
Eric made the changes to all the .java files, but this is the first I've 
heard of it.  Of course, it's not at all required.

>   - author tags are officially discouraged. these create difficulties
>     in establishing the proper ownership and the protection of our
>     committers. there are other social issues dealing with
>     collaborative development, but the Board is concerned about the
>     legal ramifications around the use of author tags

INFO: This seems like a change from what I've understood and seen 
around Apache.  I'm going to get a little more clarification on this
and get back to you all.

>   - it is quite acceptable and encouraged to recognize developers'
>     efforts in a CHANGES file, or some other descriptive file which
>     is associated with the overall PMC or release rather than
> individual files. 

OPTIONAL: Never thought about this idea.  Is there interest in doing 
this?

> * The Board reiterated that distribution of software from our servers
>   must be licensed with the Apache License or a *less* restrictive
>   license (such as plain BSD or the MIT licenses).

INFO: This is why we _can_ include jaxen (ASL 1.1-like license), but 
_cannot_ include JUnit (Common Public License).  Note the wording 
"distribution of software from out servers", not just within an Apache 
product distribution, but served in any way from the Apache servers.  
I would assume a link on our home page to JUnit would be perfectly 
fine.

> * The XML Project submitted a plan to the Board regarding a desire to
>   move to a federation of PMCs, rather than a "big umbrella" PMC. The
>   Board is very supportive of this move, and is looking forward to
>   seeing this happen.

INFO: For those who haven't been keeping up with the general list for 
the XML project, it looks like it will now be splitting out most of 
its projects into their own "top-level projects" with their own PMC, 
reporting directly to the Board and linked to each other only as a 
"federation" (new concept within the ASF).  Some smaller projects
are staying within the XML project, but when we eventually leave the
incubator, we (with the help of the XML PMC and the Board) will need 
to figure out the right direction for us.  Nothing to worry about now;
just wanted to make sure every one is up on current events with our
sponsor project. 

Cliff

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