Hi, I'd like to try and maybe provide some insights on the topic of licensing, dependencies, IP and so on. The current discussion mainly focuses on licensing, but this is only one aspect. If including some specificly licensed code is allowed or not is not always a binary decision. You can have very bad ASL-licensed code.
At first, a quick example: Two developers, Mathilda and Sven start a cool open source project A. Sven finds some nifty third party open source library B which (as code) they include in their own repository. They make a release, they fix some bugs and their project quickly gains attraction. Company BigCo uses their product and they are very happy with it, they even hire Mathilda as a consultant for some time and release their own product "BigCo DB". Then, one day, small company Moronz & Sons sues BigCo for patent infrigement. Oops, library B implemented an algorithm which Moronz & Sons hold a patent on (or claim some other IP for). BigCo is no longer so happy and now sues poor developer Mathilda, because they can. The shit hit the fan. Mathilda is broke after fighting BigCo, Sven is scared away. Project is dead. To prevent anything like this, the ASF has put up all these processes and firewalls like being a foundation, having insurance, having a PMC, requesting CLAs and code grants, having licensing policies, holding votes etc. It's for the sole purpose to secure the code we are developing here to be freely distributed to our users. Often, these are only seen as tedious, bureaucratic overhead. And indeed they are. They aren't fun. But they can make you as developers and your users more relaxed that nothing bad comes out of it. So I suggest to be double careful. Don't discuss licenses only. Look at the code. Make sure the stuff you are distributing is your own and you know it is safe to distribute. Otherwise, back it out, check with the original developers, re-implement, request code grants etc. That's the task of the PMC. By +1ing a release you say that all this is properly checked. I like CouchDB quite a lot and when I use it I want to be absolutely sure I'm safe both using it and suggesting it to my customers. Thanks, Bernd
