On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 9:23 PM, Bryant Luk <bryant....@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Leo, > > Thanks for the links. One general comment I have is that I understand > this is part of the incubation process (and no offense intended to Leo > since obviously taking energy and time for this) but if I can't look > and see if other Apache projects are doing things the right way, I > think we should have more examples of what goes in the NOTICE and > LICENSE files and points out licenses/situations/projects/wording that > require that they be put in LICENSE/NOTICE files and not. It seems to > be a common sticking point on this list for incubator projects. I > would put up a patch for the website but obviously I am still > learning. > > On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 2:37 PM, Leo Simons <m...@leosimons.com> wrote: >> On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 4:45 PM, Bryant Luk <bryant....@gmail.com> wrote: >>>> The source release has a LICENSE and a NOTICE file that indicates it >>>> contains a bunch of stuff it does not actually contain. AFAICS it >>>> should simply have a LICENSE that is just the Apache License and a >>>> NOTICE file that has just our standard license header. >>> >>> I think you're suggesting a different LICENSE/NOTICE for source versus >>> binary distributions. >> >> Yep, I see how it looks like that....though maybe I'm _really_ >> suggesting a source-only distribution :-) >> >> Look, the general rule is quite simple: LICENSE files MUST contain all >> the license information that applies to an artifact, and SHOULD >> contain only the license information that applies to that artifact. >> Similarly, NOTICE files MUST contain all the notices that apply to an >> artifact, and SHOULD contain only the notice information that applies >> to that artifact. >> >> Whenever you violate that SHOULD, you are turning lazyness/sloppiness >> into a mess for your users. >> >> For example, with this current wink distribution, you are (appear to >> be?) passing on a lot of CDDL obligations down to wink users, which is >> annoying to users that care about such things. If all your user wants >> to do is copy/paste the glue code from GzipHandler, that's a rather >> heavy license to wade through. Similarly, that user of that >> GzipHandler code now has to copy/paste the entire contents of the >> NOTICE file. >> >> Do you really want to place a burden on your users like that? > > I wouldn't, however just out of curiosity, how does this apply with > Section 4.4 of the Apache license? > > "If the Work includes a "NOTICE" text file as part of its > distribution, then any Derivative Works that You distribute must > include a readable copy of the attribution notices contained within > such NOTICE file, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any > part of the Derivative Works, in at least one of the following places: > within a NOTICE text file distributed as part of the Derivative > Works;"... > > I would consider that a copied portion of just the Apache Wink code to > be a Derivative Work, and none of the other NOTICE attributions (CDDL) > apply to the user (hence excluding those notices so their NOTICE file > is relatively brief). I'm not a lawyer but just want some > clarification for this "use case" for personal knowledge. > >>> I did some random checking looking at some >>> source versus binary Apache project distributions (incubator and >>> non-incubator) and as far as I can tell, they kept their same LICENSE >>> and NOTICE files even though they were not re-distributing the >>> dependency binaries in the source archive. >>> >>> Don't mean to say we should just follow the crowd, but I don't think >>> this is standard practice unless another thread has a viewpoint on >>> this. >> >> Unfortunately, most apache projects are not as good at following >> policies as they should be, and most engineers (including me! :-) ) >> are not nearly as good at applying legal rules and guidelines as they >> should be. > > Agreed. > >> http://www.apache.org/dev/release.html#license >> >> "What Are The Requirements To Distribute Other Artifacts In Addition >> To The Source Package? >> ... >> Nothing in this section is meant to supersede the requirements defined >> <here> and <here> that all releases be primarily based on a signed >> source package." >> >>>> The NOTICE file for the binary release should include only those >>>> notices that are actually required by the included library >>>> dependencies, and they should reproduce the exact text of those >>>> notices. For example, the slf4j notice line should not be there since >>>> slf4j does not require it. >>> >>> I see varying degrees of attribution to slf4j in other Apache >>> (incubating and non-incubating) projects (some have none, some have a >>> line). The slf4j line was kept from the Wink 0.1 release. IMHO, this >>> is not a release blocker, but we can remove it in a future release if >>> it is the right thing to do. >> >> Fortunately we have quite a clear rule on this topic these days, so no >> opinions are necessary: >> >> http://www.apache.org/dev/release.html#notice-content >> >> "What Content Is Appropriate For The NOTICE File? >> ... >> Only mandatory information required by the product's software >> licenses. Not suitable for normal documentation." >> >> For background color, here's an earlier thread on this list (which is >> where I learned about the existence of that clear rule): >> >> http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-general/200909.mbox/%3cf767f0600909090615t6582bfd1m36e4d8abe1392...@mail.gmail.com%3e > > Thanks for the link to the information. However, I would like to get > a consensus to make sure that we should not be attributing SLF4J at > all. > > http://slf4j.org/license.html > > Just for reference, I see Geronimo and Cassandra attributing in: > > https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/geronimo/server/trunk/NOTICE > https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/cassandra/trunk/NOTICE.txt > > which I believe have been used in recent release votes. I'm fine with > deleting/re-wording the attributions (afterall, less for us to > maintain) and hope not too troublesome but I would like some consensus > to make sure that this and future releases are right (without quotes > ;-) ). >
I agree with Leo that the LICENSE/NOTICE files in these source artifacts have unnecessary contents but I also agree with you in what you point out about section 4.4 of the license and i'm still +1 for this release, though it would be good to try to remove some of it in a next release. I expect you'll get a different answer from each person you ask on whats needed in the NOTICE file, for the SLF4J question there's a thread [1] and legal JIRA [2] that I think imply you probably don't really need anything for SLF4J. ...ant [1] http://apache.markmail.org/message/u66o5ucyfquxjl7i?q=LEGAL-59+order:date-forward&page=1 [2] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-59 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
