Thought this would be something worth looking at in general especially
since our headers have changed and new releases need to reflect this.
Alex
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The thread below comes from a question that came up on legal-discuss
about the right URL for legal policies at Apache. There are at least
five new legal pages that need to be posted somewhere. Other than the
legal home page, I really don't care where they all go. I just want
to get them somewhere and be done with them. Here are the five pages
with a brief description:
NOTE: other than posting drafts at legal-discuss and a couple project
lists for discussion, none of these pages have been widely advertised,
but I will soon be sending out an email to committers@ with info about
each of these pages. So, it's really not a big deal to move them now,
but not as cool to move them in a few days from now. The Legal VP
would typically be the person updating each of these pages (other than
#4, which will be automatically built from project-specific RDF docs).
1. Legal home page. (currently located at http://apache.org/legal/)
This is simply a home page for all legal docs that committers and
users may care about. It's basically the page that the Legal VP would
maintain and the one page that anyone can go to find legal docs
related to the ASF. The idea for this page came up during the last
docathon. I've posted a first draft already at
http://www.apache.org/legal/, but intentionally have not linked it
from apache.org/ until all these questions with where these docs are
going to live are resolved (since they are all linked from here).
2. Copyright notice and license header policy (currently located at
http://apache.org/legal/src-headers.html)
This is instructions to committers about how to label source headers,
info about the NOTICE file, and other info about third-party notices.
3. Handling Cryptography within an ASF Release (currently located at
http://apache.org/dev/crypto.html)
This is info to committers on what notifications need to be send for
distributing crypto and how to update the exports page described
below.
4. Crypto Exports page (not yet published, but needs to be in next
couple days for James project)
This page is primarily for the US Govt folks who want to know what
crypto we distribute and where to find it. It might also be used in
the future as a summary to our users for the same info, but this isn't
a requirement. It is *not* a page about licenses, since we export
code without requiring an export license (although one could say it is
related to the fact that no license is required where it otherwise
would be).
5. Third-Party Licensing Policy (currently posted as draft at
http://people.apache.org/~cliffs/3party.html, but final version is
just about ready to be released and needs a home)
This is primarily instructions to committers on what non-AL licenses
can be included in Apache releases and how to deal with ones that are
prohibited.
I would have thought it would make sense to include all these docs
under the /legal dir that was suggested to me during the last
docathon, but I really don't care. Please help!
Cliff
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Roy T. Fielding <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Aug 2, 2006 4:19 PM
Subject: Re: Finally posted: src file header and copyright policy
To: Cliff Schmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: [email protected]
On Aug 1, 2006, at 2:01 PM, Cliff Schmidt wrote:
On 7/23/06, robert burrell donkin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 14:28 -0700, Cliff Schmidt wrote:
> On 7/17/06, Roy T. Fielding <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On Jul 16, 2006, at 11:39 PM, Cliff Schmidt wrote:
> >
> > > Hey legal-discuss folks,
> > >
> > > I've finally posted the "Source Header and Copyright Notice
Policy":
> > > http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html.
> >
> > The content looks good.
> >
> > I would prefer that instructions to Apache committers be located
> > under <http://www.apache.org/dev/>. Linking them from legal
is fine,
> > but this is a policy from the board that should be treated
like all
> > the other documentation.
IMO this is a decision that could do with some more thought.
ATM infrastructure is charged with oversight of www.apache.org and in
particular http://www.apache.org/dev/ but there really isn't very
much
content in there which isn't at least indirectly related to
infrastructure.
other groups within apache (for example legal, public relations,
conferences) are now starting to create content for
www.apache.org. so,
we need to think about the right organisation for this new content.
in terms of oversight, it seems more convenient to keep all
documentation (whether aimed at committers or not) together at the
top
level and make each group responsible for overseeing everything under
that directory.
this strategy would create a little more work in terms of
indexing. the
generated sitemap wouldn't pick up committer content in these other
areas but makes no difference to the manual links.
I actually agree with you, Robert. I was just willing to go along
with Roy's suggestion because I personally didn't feel strongly about
it and just wanted to get it posted in one place and be done.
However, you are probably right to think about the big picture here.
I am a bit confused about what Robert is suggesting. The goal should
be to make it easy for people to find the right documentation and for
us to edit the right documentation. The documentation we are talking
about is maintained by site-dev under the auspices of infrastructure
because infrastructure is a President's committee tasked with that
responsibility. The fact that some of the existing documentation
under dev is about creating new accounts is irrelevant. All of it is
about instructions to committers on how to manage projects and make
releases, which is exactly what Cliff is documenting in the src header
and copyright policy. Placing it somewhere else is not helpful.
Right now, all of the documentation for "how to develop software at
Apache" is under /dev/ except for the bits that have just recently
been put under /legal/. All of the software licenses that Apache offers
to the world are under /licenses/ (and that is where export.html should
be as well, since it is a list of export licenses). All of the ASF
as a Foundation information is under /foundation/ except for the bits
that have just recently been put under /legal/.
Not surprisingly, I don't agree with Cliff's individual decision to put
the stuff he authors in a different category than all prior decisions by
the site team. Everything we do at the ASF is "legal", so it doesn't
make any sense as a means of containment even if Cliff is the only one
editing those documents. It makes sense to have an organizational page
for our lawyers somewhere, but the "/legal/" section isn't even linked
from our other pages and the location should be under /foundation/
in any case. In short, the docs are in the wrong place.
If someone wants to take over the entire site design and build some
new hierarchy of sensible documentation, that's fine with me.
Individual authors, OTOH, should respect the conventions that we
already have on site.
....Roy
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