I prefer b) and beyond the NOTICE file already there I'll draft a sentence explaining they must have "overlooked" the explicit mention of a "software" license but it is obvious, all software artifacts created by W3C must follow the same "software license" even if their projects may not follow the same structure as most Apache projects do;-)
The top of the codebase http://www.w3.org/2005/MWI/DDWG/drafts/api/simple/ is quite interesting, as it contains other bindings like Perl (that btw. was the only one I noticed with a (C) other than W3C, so anybody writing something for Perl would have to be more careful) a WSDL and similar artifacts. No LICENSE file but again, W3C works and thinks differently, and in other standard bodies like the JCP you also find some JSRs with a simple pointer to a TXT or PDF document with the Spec License binding to that JSR regardless what the source repository says or doesn't say. a) would be extremely cumbersome and cause exactly the disruption and fracture to the community some (especially Reza) feared a W3C DDR compliant module would do to DeviceMap as such. It would force anybody who wishes to provide a working and compliant W3C DDR implementation against the current or future repository data to use all sorts of different places. GitHub, RezaSoft.org (because this draft https://svn.apache.org/viewvc/devicemap/trunk/devicemap/java/classifier_w3c_simple/ would naturally have to be hosted elsewhere, too if put on top current or future versions of the Classifier/Client) or other "private" sites we occasionally saw being used by some PMC members. It would disfranchise a not very big Apache community (compared to some of the "stars" with often Hundreds of committers;-) even further and irritate users who want to download and use this even if the DeviceMap frontpage may have a legitimate pointer to those. Technically I don't see a huge problem, but ideologically it may soften the community, so I would prefer b) WDYT? Werner On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 5:18 PM, Bertrand Delacretaz <[email protected] > wrote: > Hi, > > On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 3:05 PM, Werner Keil <[email protected]> > wrote: > > The JAR is the official Java distro of the W3C DDR API: > > http://www.w3.org/TR/DDR-Simple-API/#sec-java-representation > > Once again I don't care about binary jar files in this context - to be > able to release stuff that has the W3C DDR API as a core dependency, > we need to be able to point people to a place where they can download > its source code, with an explicit license that's appropriate for a > core dependency as per http://apache.org/legal/resolved.html > > The source code that you point to at > http://www.w3.org/2005/MWI/DDWG/drafts/api/simple/java/src doesn't > include any license information and I don't see a pointer to the W3C > license that you mention > (http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-software-20021231) > in that source code. > > Now, I agree with you that it doesn't seem risky to use that code, and > as a user I might be safe assuming it's under standard W3C license, > but IMO it doesn't fit the requirements of "not adding any > restrictions beyond the Apache License" due to the missing explicit > license. We cannot push that lack of clarity down to our users, at > least not without warning them. > > At this point I see two options: > > a) The modules that depend on this W3C DDR API are forked out to a > non-Apache project, which we can point to from our website > > b) You draft a brief statement for the NOTICE file of our modules that > depend on the W3C DDR APIs that points to that W3C source code and > warns users about the slightly unclear licensing. The PMC can then > vote to make that statement official and we'll have a clear warning > about that source code, that's acceptable IMO. > > -Bertrand >
