I'm going to suggest that we move this conversation solely to
licensing@, and let the Derby peeps get on with writing code.
I'll answer over on licensing@
geir
On Sep 27, 2004, at 7:27 AM, Jennifer B Machovec wrote:
There is a significant difference between having a contributor give ASF
and its end-users a broad copyright and patent license grant (which
does
not require ASF to distribute the code under any particular licensing
terms) and telling the contributor that he must assign away all rights
of
ownership. Under the process that has been in place at ASF since its
inception, a contributor can continue to use or license his code in any
manner that he sees fit (concurrently with ASF's use of the code under
the
license grant) because he retains ownership of the intellectual
property.
Asking the contributor to transfer ownership to ASF would destroy these
rights. I imagine that a significant number of contributors would be
reluctant to give up their rights in their creation entirely.
As far as the issue of additional copyright holders, there can very
well
be several copyright owners affiliated with a particular project. ASF,
for instance, generally holds copyright for the collection of works
that
comprise the project. Developers who modify ASF code hold copyright in
the derivative works thus created. Even though third-party copyright
notices may not be included for all contributors, developers and
companies
who have submitted code to ASF for the last several years have
nevertheless retained the status of copyright owner for their code.
This
doesn't thwart ASF from being able to demonstrate a clear provenance in
the IP; as long as those contributors have executed CLAs or otherwise
submitted code under documents containing broad license grants similar
to
those in effect today, the scope of those grants should be sufficient
for
ASF to keep doing business as usual.
Cheers,
Jennifer
"Geir Magnusson Jr." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
09/27/2004 09:59 AM
Please respond to "Derby Development"
To: "Derby Development" <[email protected]>
cc:
Subject: Re: Derby code copyright question
On Sep 26, 2004, at 6:20 PM, Daniel John Debrunner wrote:
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Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote:
On Sep 26, 2004, at 11:37 AM, Daniel John Debrunner wrote:
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Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote:
Traditionally, the only time we distribute code under someone
else's
copyright is when we are including other works as a convenience for
our
users, such as packaging something in a distribution. Otherwise,
we
tend not to host projects owned by other entities. Sourceforge is
good
for that.
Incorrect.
Not "Incorrect". Show me software in the ASF that is not (c) ASF,
besides standard APIs or such. We may have attributed (c) ASF by
mistake, or incorrectly, but it is all (c) ASF except for inclusions
of
outside works for packaging convenience.
Geir, I think we must be misunderstanding each other.
All code distributed by ASF may only have (C) ASF notices but that
does
not change the fact that the code does have additional copyright
holders. I thought you were claiming that ASF only distributed code
where the only copyright holder was ASF.
You can't really have additional copyright holders, if I understand
copyright law correctly. You can have licensees. I'll be the first to
admit that I had this wrong before this came up. I thought that the
ASF had free and clear copyright ownership, and the contributor did
too. Thus, the ASF was free to manage the code in the way that we saw
fit - for example, we could change the license under which that code
was distributed - the license for anything and everything in the
distro. I don't believe we can do that with derby if it's (c) IBM
unless we get another agreement from IBM allowing us to do that. I
don't want to go down that road because of the administrative burden
that would place on the ASF.
I'm just baffled why this is such a problem - why can't IBM just assign
copyright?
Derby wants to follow existing ASF practices, I'm now no longer have
any
idea what folks are objecting to. NOTICES file seems to be the new
issue, but again Derby wants to follow existing ASF practice, as seen
in
the Xerces Java notice file and the Beehive notice file.
I guess the question I have, looking at Xerces, and I as a non-lawyer
read it this way
"Xerces is (c) ASF in its entirety, and we're giving credit to IBM and
Sun for contributions to this work that were *originally* (c) IBM or
(c) SUNW"
The implication to this non-lawyer was *originally* (c) IBM but isn't
now - it's wholly (c) ASF. So if I have a problem, I talk to ASF. I
don't need to rope in Sun and IBM.
I think that it serves everyones interest to keep things clear and
simple. One of the things we strive to do at the ASF is provide
software with clear IP provenance that doesn't require our users to
deal with any other organization for any issues surrounding the
distributed work.
I think everyone involved in this issue feels that is a worthy
objective of the ASF, so I just don't grok the pushback we're getting
on this.
geir
--
Geir Magnusson Jr +1-203-665-6437
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
Geir Magnusson Jr +1-203-665-6437
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
