----- Original Message ---- > From: Ralph Goers <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Cc: Legal Discuss <[email protected]> > Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2009 8:13:37 PM > Subject: Re: Thrift release legal issues > > See below. First, this should have been asked on legal-discuss. Second, the > answers below are just my opinion. > > On Aug 16, 2009, at 4:24 PM, Joe Schaefer wrote: > > > I'm trying to coax out a release of Apache Thrift and ran into a > > few obstacles. Maybe you can offer me a little guidance? > > > > First, I found that the CCLA from Facebook excludes > > contributions from 3rd parties who wrote code for Thrift > > prior to the move to Apache. With the exception of imeem.com, > > all of the corporate entities appear to have a CCLA on file > > with us. I've attempted to contact the folks from imeem.com > > to request that a CCLA be filed for their Thrift work. > > > > I've also found that there are 6 individuals listed in the > > Facebook CCLA who do not have ICLAs with us and have accordingly > > contacted them as well. > > Was the Facebook CCLA a software grant and were the 6 individuals Facebook > employees (if not, why were they listed in the CCLA)?
They were not Facebook employees. The individuals in question were listed as exclusions to the covered contributions. See https://svn.apache.org/repos/private/documents/cclas/facebook-2.pdf > If they did their > development on behalf of Facebook then as I understand it Facebook owns the > rights to the software and ICLAs shouldn't be required. The software grant > from > Facebook would be enough. It isn't. > > > > > So the first question is: do we have any contingency strategies > > for the likely situation where not all past contributors to Thrift > > will have paperwork on file in the near future? Can Thrift still > > cut a release or does that block it? Thrift was in fact an open > > source project prior to coming here, and it *has* released stuff under > > an alternate license. Does that mitigate the issue at all? > > See my comment above. > > > > > The second question regards the LICENSE file. I'm accustomed to > > seeing all the licenses for all the code to be distributed listed > > in the LICENSE file, but don't see anywhere within the Incubator > > docs that this concept is mandatory. I've been pushing Thrift to > > do this because that's the way I've usually seen it done but the > > idea hasn't gained any traction with the thrift devs yet. Is there > > such a policy, does it simply constitute best practice, or am I > > barking up the wrong tree? > > I was under the impression the LICENSE file should contain the Apache > license. > All other licenses should be referenced in the NOTICE file. See > http://www.apache.org/licenses/. That's not the way the Apache HTTPD Server manages their LICENSE file. Each 3rd party component's corresponding license is included in the LICENSE file. > > > The third issue is that Thrift intends to distribute with an LGPL > > dependency on their build system. I'm familiar with the scary language > > adopted by the legal team regarding the LGPL, but don't consider this > > situation to be problematic since it's just a few Makefiles and such. > > Will I need to get special permission from legal for this? > > If they are using Maven 2 and if the LGPL dependency is referenced as a > dependency in the pom such that it is downloaded during the build and is not > distributed with Apache software (or if the build process is functionally > equivalent to this), I personally would have no problem with it being used as > part of the build. It's a C-style project, with C-style Makefiles. Nothing is downloaded during the build process- the LGPL'd Makefiles in question are in subversion and to be distributed within a release package. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
