On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 10:20 PM, scott comer <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 2. Rat reports a lot of "????", which shows at the top as "unapproved >> licenses". For all files that supports comments, the Apache standard >> header should be used. Need to fix this. >> > > yes. i don't see any way to customize (despite words that say you can, must > be in the source code > that i can do that) rat's list of file types that matter. *.vcproj and > readme style text files would seem > to fall into the category of files that don't matter. i'm working on the > complaints today to resolve the > legitimate issues. Yes. And feel free to forward your usecase to the RAT team (or a patch if you hack Python (still is?)), so that the rule can be implemented in the report for the future. >> Since you don't distribute any of the "Dependencies", I would >> recommend that you rename it to "System Requirements". Apache allows >> system requirements of stuff with just about any license, whereas >> redistributed dependencies must be of certain kinds. My guess is that >> you codebase may actually "dependOn" velocity, so perhaps a bit >> surprise to see it not included in the distro. JavaCC is another one >> that should perhaps be redistributed (no problem, since it is BSD >> license) to simplify for users and hence stay as a "Dependency". >> > > not sure what you're saying here. we do distribute velocity in our binary > image. because it is > needed at runtime by the compiler. we have no other runtime dependencies. > the rest (javacc, > junit, apr, ant, etc.) are build dependencies. are you suggesting we should > put those into our > source tree as well? (personally, i'd like that, as the current scheme has a > pretty high barrier > to getting started and lots of twitchy settings to keep it working). Well, what I am trying to say is that there is a significant difference in "Dependency" and "System Requirement" from Apache Legal's PoV. For instance, we can't have Gnu C Compiler as a "Dependency", i.e. a redistributed artifact of an incompatible license (although FSF's license would allow us to redistribute), BUT we can have a project listing the Gnu C Compiler as a "System Requirement" either for building sources or even for the runtime (perhaps not recommended, but allowed). >From the users' point of view, the lesser the problem to get going, i.e. a really, really short "Installations" or "Build from Sources" document, the better. In fact, personally I take it as failure of my own projects if it requires more than a couple of common "System Reqs", such as JDK, Maven, Ant or similar. So, my suggestions (not required) is that you look at; What is "Runtime Dependency", "Build time Dependency" and "System Requirement"? And as little as possible (MS stuff being obvious) being the "System Req", and the binary distro containing the "Runtime Dependency" stuff. HTH -- Niclas Hedhman, Software Developer http://www.qi4j.org - New Energy for Java I live here; http://tinyurl.com/2qq9er I work here; http://tinyurl.com/2ymelc I relax here; http://tinyurl.com/2cgsug
