Hi,
On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 1:08 PM, Tommaso Teofili
<[email protected]> wrote:
> so the copyright holder signing a SGA transfers distribution rights to ASF.
> Jukka and others, please correct me if I am wrong.
You're right, though using "grants" instead of "transfers" would be
slightly more accurate.
The exact wording of clause 1 in the software grant [1] spells this
out in more detail:
1. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, Licensor
hereby grants to the Foundation:
a) a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, irrevocable
copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of,
publicly display, publicly perform, distribute and sublicense,
internally and externally, the Software and such derivative
works, in source code and object code form; and,
b) a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, irrevocable
patent license under Licensed Patents to make, use, sell,
offer to sell, import and otherwise transfer the Software
in source code and object code form. "Licensed Patents" mean
patent claims owned by Licensor which are necessarily
infringed by the use or sale of the Software alone.
What this means in practice is that the ASF (in this case the Apache
UIMA project) can "sublicense" the material under ALv2 and distribute
it to the public.
And regarding any downstream consumers who'd want to further use this
material, clause 2 of the ALv2 grants them similar rights to
sublicense and distribute it as part of their own products or other
distributions:
2. Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of
this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual,
worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable
copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of,
publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the
Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form.
(Note the "Subject to the terms and conditions of this License" in
both cases. I'm quoting just the essential bits of the licenses here,
but you'll need to read them entirely for all the details.)
So, to summarize, once the original copyright holder submits the
software grant [1] and we take this through the IP clearance process
[3], Apache UIMA will release the material for everyone to use under
the ALv2 [2].
[1] http://www.apache.org/licenses/software-grant.txt
[2] http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt
[3] http://incubator.apache.org/ip-clearance/index.html
BR,
Jukka Zitting
