There is a mix of concerns here and we are talking about different things. It's quite possible that we end up doing mistakes during our IP clearance so if a super-defensive company wants to use NetBeans they might as well decide to re-do the IP clearance themselves.
If our template license file is "Copyright __year__ __author__ Some legalese" and we have 2 concrete license files where only the Copyright line is changed then I don't need a degree in US IP Law to conclude it's the same license with different authors. Obviously we can ask LEGAL about something tricky but we are talking about something basic here. Now, we have all the *original* licenses in the externa/-license.txt files for each external dependency. We add to that -license.txt file a 'License:' header which is purposely designed to allow you to group licenses by family. Because a lawyer will not care if we have 20 different authors using MIT, will only care that our dependencies are MIT. And this is the other concern: what's that 'License:' header supposed to represent? When would we add a new file in nbbuild/licenses and when will we refer to an existing license? And finally: how do we build the final LICENSE file out of these disparate files? Honestly I believe NetBeans already has very good IP management. We seem to be scolded a lot and forced to maintain a very high standard but this seems to be much higher than other Apache projects (historically) held. Also, since our codebase is so large we just have more to look at. --emi ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On 18 June 2018 4:55 AM, Tim Boudreau <[email protected]> wrote: > > The way I see it nbbuild/licenses are 'families'. And the 'License:' > > > > header in external/*-license.txt points to a family. A changing author line > > > > doesn't change the license itself / the license family. > > > You and I are not the target audience for it - lawyers are. If that's what > > gets combined into the license agreement dialog, by far the safest bet is > > to include them unaltered from their origin, and if that means two files > > with a minor diff, so be it. > > For a big company that wants to use NetBeans or the platform, they are > > likely to actually have their lawyers review all the licenses involved. > > Question 1 is, are these really all the exact licenses. If the answer to > > that is no, some have been altered but are are almost the same plus or > > minus this text or that, the only responsible course of action is for the > > lawyer to find all the original libraries and review the real original > > licenses one by one. Most likely they give an estimate of how many hours > > that will take, and the company decides not to use NetBeans - lawyers > > aren't cheap. > > So I get it - but a lawyer would not be able to use "it's this family of > > license" because it could have an alteration that materially changes the > > terms, and without seeing the original they can't guarantee that. > > -Tim > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > http://timboudreau.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
