[Lucene.Net] Re: Creating a ASF fork of Sharpen under a dOCL license

[Scott Lombard <sl...@theta.net>]

I sent an email to the db4o team to see what they think.  When I get a
response back from them we should have more answers.  At that point it
will either be a no on their end or we will have specific items to
discuss.

Scott

On Friday, March 25, 2011, Stefan Bodewig <bo...@apache.org> wrote:
> On 2011-03-25, Prescott Nasser wrote:
>
>> Stefan, how do you read their licensing:
>
>> http://www.db4o.com/about/company/legalpolicies/docl.aspx
>
>> By your reading is it possible to include this in our repo to keep
>> everything together? or would this have to be outside the ASF?
>
> The usual IANAL disclaimer applies and we could ask for legal clearance
> if we absolutely think we need it.
>
> From a cursory glance I don't think the policy applies to our use-case
> at all.
>
> ,----
> | 1. Subject
> |
> | "Software" means the current version of the db4o database engine
> | software and all patches, bug fixes, error corrections and future
> | versions.
> `----
>
> AFAIU Sharpen is not part of the database engine.
>
> and in addition I'm not sure that a fork of the codebase is in line with
> what they'd consider a derivative work.
>
> Even if it would apply, the license to the original code base was
> non-transferable and you'd only get the right to sublicense the original
> code base under the rules of the GPL (section 2b - in addition there is
> no software at all prior to accepting the agreement).  I don't see how
> this could work.
>
> If you really feel that forking Sharpen is the best way to move forward
> - not my call to make - then forking the GPLed sources into a project
> that is using the GPL itself seems to be the only choice that was
> legally sane.
>
> Stefan
>