Gregory Nutt wrote on 12/10/23 9:54 AM:
On 12/10/2023 7:15 AM, Alan C. Assis wrote:
I understand your point. And in fact I think the issue is not your
contribution itself, but the future contribution from developers of RTEMS
and Linux that are using GPL.
I think we have to be careful with the word "contribution". The ASF
cannot accept any contribution that is licensed and copyrighted by some
other entity. To "contribute" the code is to donate the code to the ASF
without retaining any claims to it. Then the code belongs to the ASF and
can be re-licensed as Apache 2.0 with the ASF copyright.
Er, no, that's not how the ASF treats "contributions". In general, when
someone contributes their copyrighted work to an Apache project, they
keep the copyright, and merely license enough rights to the ASF such
that the ASF (through our projects) can then re-ship that contribution
at any point in the future as part of a larger work, under terms like
the Apache-2.0 license.
Any contributions still "belong" copyright-wise to the original author,
who can continue to do whatever else they want with their code,
including submitting to other projects, possibly under other licenses.
The legal framework for contributions is twofold, so folks interested in
details really need to read both of these:
- Apache-2.0 license, section 5. Submission of Contributions
https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0#contributions
- Individual Contributor License Agreement
https://www.apache.org/licenses/contributor-agreements.html#clas
The point is that the ASF only takes enough licensed rights so that we
can safely ship code in our projects, *and* so that users of Apache
projects only have to comply with the Apache-2.0 license overall.
--
- Shane
Member
The Apache Software Foundation
