Re: [PATCH] Change Copyright notice to ASF

[Jason Rimmer]

	I've been operating under the assumption that 'donation' of code to 
Apache included the assignment of copyright.  I believe this is what 
happened with the Sun donated Tomcat code, and perhaps others.
	I confess I'm unable to find mention of any such policy on any Apache 
documents therefore I may be mistaken.  According to what I have found 
copyright assignment is not necessary though conformance/relicensing 
with the Apache license is.  The closest I've found to a determination 
in this respect for the Derby project is RuS' mention of: 'IBM 
contributes the Cloudscape code to the ASF, including copyright 
licensing and so forth. The result is called Apache Derby.' at 
http://ken.coar.org/burrow/?day=2004-08-03.  Unfortunately 'copyright 
licensing' is a phrase whose interpretation is beyond my meager 
knowledge of copyright law.  Does this indicate simply a relicensing of 
the copyright or is there more to it?
	If the Apache Foundation doesn't maintain copyright can it effectively 
defend Derby's license?  I recall this being an issue for any code 
contributed to FSF leading to any such contribution having the copyright 
assigned to the FSF.  More information is available here, 
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html.

Daniel John Debrunner wrote:
<snip>
I believe that since the copyright is IBM's, the original (IBM's)
statement of copyright (not licence) should remain. The original comment
in each java file is like
   Licensed Materials - Property of IBM
   Cloudscape - Package org.apache.derby.authentication
   (C) Copyright IBM Corp. 1998, 2004. All Rights Reserved.
   US Government Users Restricted Rights - Use, duplication or
   disclosure restricted by GSA ADP Schedule Contract with IBM Corp.
The 'Licensed Materials - Property of IBM', 'All Rights Reserved' and
'US Government ...' are licensing terms and can be removed and replaced
as Jonas says above. Which leaves
   Cloudscape - Package org.apache.derby.authentication
   (C) Copyright IBM Corp. 1998, 2004. All Rights Reserved.
   Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0
   [remainder of standard Apache text as in Jonas's e-mail]
Not sure what should be done about the 'Cloudscape ...' line, it's
described as a unique identifer in the IBM copyright guidelines.
Dan.
<key snip>
--
Jason Rimmer
jrimmer at irth dot net