On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 7:22 AM, James Carman <ja...@carmanconsulting.com> wrote: > And that covers us from a legal standpoint? Is there anything > "special"' about this situation that makes this appropriate?
If you have a codebase which was not previously under the ALv2 -- say it was either proprietary or available under a different open source license -- then the Software Grant is hugely important from a legal standpoint. You have to get every last copyright owner to sign it, and if you can't get them all on board you have a mess on your hands that will have to be dealt with. In contrast, from a legal standpoint, a signed Software Grant doesn't change much when the codebase is already under the ALv2. (Quite possibly it has zero effect but I'd need to ask a lawyer about the text of the Software Grant form to confirm that.) Separate from the legal aspect, we have a social tradition at Apache of only accepting "voluntary contributions". This prevents social disharmony if somebody doesn't want their contribution to go to a project hosted at the ASF. For Groovy, I agree with Benson. We already have sufficient informal evidence that the Groovy community at large has granted social approval for the move to Apache. The software grant does not change much about the legal status of the codebase. Let's not get hung up on who has to sign it. Marvin Humphrey --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
