Hello, It seems we are somewhat overzealous in our dependency license tracking and our releases are having a lot of discussions because we still have the GPL license included among the source files, since we have compile-time GPL (w/CPE) dependencies.
We don't include the GPL license in LICENSE or NOTICE, which is correct, but the reviewers still grep for GPL and find the license text for the compile time dependencies somewhere in the external/ folders. So, we had a vote[1] on a new Apache NetBeans policy of not tracking compile time dependencies licenses. We will do a summary review when adding new compile time dependencies, but that will be all. See this PR where we discuss the matter a bit https://github.com/apache/incubator-netbeans/pull/561 and there are also links towards other mailing list (vote-related) discussions. Personally I find this to be a mistake and I don't see why the ASF cares if some downstream user gets scared when grep-ing for GPL inside our release. As long as the release is valid, having the GPL license text in there would only turn away the most superficial downstream legal reviewer. Since Apache projects are not about maximising the market share or number of users, we should not be concerned with this. In this regard, what we truly need to change is the Apache policy about all this. Vote passed[2] with the following PPMC votes: +1 Wade Chandler +1 Matthias Bläsing +1 Emilian Bold (started vote) 0 Antonio Vieiro I'll create a wiki page with to take not of this project-based policy. 1. https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/f44ed1652f900bfffc3af61a52c58cdc7be4bc9ef182291e4318dc3b@%3Cprivate.netbeans.apache.org%3E 2. https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/52fb6d7648bfddc30319cda651e4ca5a2ea46bbc0bb7bb37fb6660be@%3Cprivate.netbeans.apache.org%3E --emi --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] For further information about the NetBeans mailing lists, visit: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Mailing+lists
